{"id":173952,"date":"2025-09-28T00:13:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-28T00:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/173952\/"},"modified":"2025-09-28T00:13:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-28T00:13:07","slug":"black-ferns-v-france-braxton-sorensen-mcgee-named-world-rugby-womens-breakthrough-player-of-the-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/173952\/","title":{"rendered":"Black Ferns v France: Braxton Sorensen-McGee named World Rugby women\u2019s breakthrough player of the year"},"content":{"rendered":"

After playing a starring role in the Blues\u2019 successful Super Rugby Aupiki season, she earned her first call-up to the national team for the Pacific Four tournament \u2013 brought into the side at the expense of incumbent fullback Renee Holmes, who later worked her way back into the team.<\/p>\n

Holmes was the World Cup\u2019s second-leading points-scorer (64) behind Sorensen-McGee.<\/p>\n

The pair combined for 50% of the Black Ferns\u2019 points in the tournament.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t take long for Sorensen-McGee to settle into test rugby in the Pacific Four tournament \u2013 and switching to the wing to allow for Holmes\u2019 return at fullback didn\u2019t slow her down at all. She finished the year having played in nine tests, with 14 tries to her name.<\/p>\n

She won the breakthrough player of the year award ahead of Black Ferns teammate Jorja Miller and Fiji\u2019s Josifini Neihamu.<\/p>\n

Miller was also up for the World Rugby women\u2019s XVs player of the year, which went to star Canadian forward Sophie de Goede. English midfielder Megan Jones was also a finialist for the award.<\/p>\n

England\u2019s Kiwi coach John Mitchell was named women\u2019s coach of the year after leading the Red Roses to the World Cup title<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Christopher Reive<\/a> joined the Herald sports team in 2017, bringing the same versatility to his coverage as he does to his sports viewing habits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After playing a starring role in the Blues\u2019 successful Super Rugby Aupiki season, she earned her first call-up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":173953,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,303,113119,108157,113121,26046,2649,2592,99938,1787,15624,760,113120,85,320,26429,24351,1720,1547],"class_list":["post-173952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-black","tag-braxton","tag-breakthrough","tag-crescendo","tag-ferns","tag-final","tag-france","tag-named","tag-of","tag-player","tag-rugby","tag-sorensenmcgee","tag-sports","tag-the","tag-without","tag-womens","tag-world","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173952","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=173952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173952\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}