Watch the 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup live and on-demand via Stan Sport.<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cThis whole entire preparation week I never really thought about Canada,\u201d Talakai said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing number two in the world, there probably is a lot of pressure on them and I’m just looking to go out there and do the same thing.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo the same thing that we did to them against England and do it to Canada.<\/p>\n
\u201c[Set piece wise], there’s always like an element of execution.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s not just like, oh, we’re just doing a scrum just to have a scrum.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere’s a game plan to everything that we try and do. And I guess just as a unit, if one fails, then the whole thing breaks down. So we just got to make sure that we’re all on top of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Talakai and the pack will have their work cut out against an imposing Canadian forward pack, with the women in red having one of the most imposing set piece outfits in women\u2019s rugby.<\/p>\n
However, should the Wallaroos maintain parity at set piece, the door opens for the likes of Friedrichs, who is set to partner back with Cecilia Smith after several games with veteran Trilleen Pomare.<\/p>\n
The transition in the centres will be seamless for the 35-capped Wallaroo, having played with both on many occasions.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously they’re different players, but they both bring similar strong running ball game,\u201d Friedrichs explained.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAs well as our game plan, they’re ball players as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo just knowing the way that they are triggers, that when they’re going to run and when they’re going to play, I think is important.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’ve been together long enough as a three that I think we’re pretty on top of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The match will be one of significance for several players, potentially serving as the last World Cup.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For Friedrichs, with that additional pressure there is only one option: empty the tank.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think every game we go into, we kind of want to empty the tank,\u201d the centre added.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don’t ever want to leave anything out there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Wallaroos are in the closing stages of preparing for their quarterfinal – and with the added pressure…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":99509,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85,19259],"class_list":["post-136564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-wallaroos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136564\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}