{"id":40500,"date":"2025-08-03T14:39:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-03T14:39:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/40500\/"},"modified":"2025-08-03T14:39:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-03T14:39:08","slug":"womens-rugby-world-cup-marlie-packer-free-to-play-tournament-opener","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/40500\/","title":{"rendered":"Women’s Rugby World Cup: Marlie Packer free to play tournament opener"},"content":{"rendered":"

Flanker Marlie Packer will not miss the start of England’s home Women’s Rugby World Cup after she was given a one-match ban for a red card against Spain on Saturday.<\/p>\n

The 35-year-old was sent off in the Red Roses’ 97-7 World Cup warm-up win<\/a> in Leicester for a clumsy clearout that caught the leg of full-back Claudia Pena.<\/p>\n

The ban rules Packer out of England’s final warm-up away to France on Saturday, before their World Cup opener against the United States in Sunderland on 22 August.<\/p>\n

The victory over Spain was Packer’s first game as captain since being replaced in the role by Zoe Aldcroft in January.<\/a><\/p>\n

She captained the Red Roses to back-to-back Six Nations Grand Slams in 2023 and 2024 and is one of head coach John Mitchell’s vice-captains.<\/p>\n

Mitchell’s side are on a 26-game winning run and are favourites to become world champions, with their last defeat coming in the Word Cup final against New Zealand in 2022.<\/a><\/p>\n

Packer, who started England’s World Cup final win in 2014, still faces tough competition to start the World Cup opener in the back row.<\/p>\n

Maddie Feaunati, 23, started instead of Packer for the Six Nations Grand Slam decider against France in April,<\/a> while Sadia Kabeya, 23, has also played ahead of her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Flanker Marlie Packer will not miss the start of England’s home Women’s Rugby World Cup after she was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40501,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-40500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40500","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=40500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}