{"id":86240,"date":"2025-08-22T00:39:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-22T00:39:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/86240\/"},"modified":"2025-08-22T00:39:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-22T00:39:07","slug":"red-roses-pick-up-where-lionesses-left-off-in-england-womens-great-sporting-summer-womens-rugby-world-cup-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/86240\/","title":{"rendered":"Red Roses pick up where Lionesses left off in England women\u2019s great sporting summer | Women’s Rugby World Cup 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

Crouch. Set. Re-engage. A sporting summer in which England\u2019s women have already taken centre stage<\/a> begins a powerful second act on Friday night as the Red Roses kick off the Women\u2019s Rugby World Cup in Sunderland. The Lionesses have already shattered many perceptions in winning the Women\u2019s Euros twice. Now the Red Roses hope to forcibly ram home the message.<\/p>\n

More than 40,000 fans will be at the Stadium of Light to see England begin their campaign<\/a> against the United States, with millions more expected to watch it live on BBC One. The result is expected to be a rout. In fact, anyone betting \u00a3100 on the Red Roses to win will get just 10p in winnings if they are successful.<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly the Red Roses are also huge favourites for the tournament, having lost only one of their past 58 matches<\/a>. That defeat came in the 2022 World Cup final<\/a> against New Zealand, one of the few teams apart from England to have a squad of professional players.<\/p>\n

But while the teams fight it out for the World Cup trophy, a separate battle for hearts and minds will also take place over the next month as organisers attempt to capitalise on the growing popularity of the women\u2019s game across the globe.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur ambition for this tournament goes far beyond the pitch,\u201d says Sarah Massey, the Women\u2019s Rugby World Cup managing director. \u201cWe want to use the platform that this tournament has to empower real change.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to be able to show that women and girls can be anything, do anything and belong anywhere in rugby, in sport and in society. And we want to use this to break down barriers and challenge stereotypes. If you can\u2019t see it, you can\u2019t be it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those are lofty words but organisers insist they are backed up with action by its all-women leadership team. Fourteen of the 16 teams\u2019 security advisers are women, 62% of volunteers are women and the pitch for the final \u2013 which will be staged in front of a record-breaking crowd<\/a> of 82,000 people at the Allianz Stadium in Twickenham \u2013 will be prepared by an all-women grounds team.<\/p>\n

These are exciting times for women\u2019s rugby, but even its most ardent supporters acknowledge that the sport is still at least a decade behind women\u2019s football. The world No 2 ranked team, Canada, are still largely amateur and have had to raise funds from businesses to help them prepare, while many players are taking annual leave from their day jobs to play in England.<\/p>\n

That perhaps adds to the tournament\u2019s charm. Nonetheless, the gap between the best \u2013 England, Canada, New Zealand and France \u2013 and the rest also remains large, and there will be huge mismatches in the group stages. However organisers insist the expansion from 12 to 16 teams will help the game develop globally in the long run.<\/p>\n

USA\u2019s Ilona Maher is women\u2019s rugby\u2019s one mainstream star. Photograph: Lukas Coch\/EPA<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve made the decision to grow the game,\u201d says Sally Horrox, the chief of Women\u2019s Rugby World Cup. \u201cBut it\u2019s worth acknowledging that the unions around the world are all on a very different stage of their development, and that will reflect in some of the scorelines.<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, we are getting to a more competitive game with really rapid strides being made by a number of countries around the world. So we are confident that we are on the right trajectory.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Notably, the women\u2019s game already has one mainstream star: the American Ilona Maher<\/a>, who has more than five million followers on Instagram and appeared on Dancing With The Stars. But World Rugby is hoping that she could be the first of many in the US, with the 2028 Olympics to be staged in Los Angeles and the Rugby World Cups of 2031 and 2033 also being held in the US.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile back in Britain, UK Sport insists that the Women\u2019s Rugby World Cup is the start of a range of events \u2013 including the Women\u2019s T20 Cricket World Cup in 2026, Tour de France Femme in 2027, and bids for future World Athletics Championships and Women\u2019s World Cup \u2013 to push women\u2019s sport.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe see this tournament as the spark to light a decade of progression of women\u2019s sport in the UK over the next 10 years,\u201d says Esther Britten, the head of major events at UK Sport. \u201cWe want to showcase women\u2019s sport at its very best and to inspire millions.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is a message shared by Horrox on the eve of a Women\u2019s World Cup she believes will be a gamechanger for the sport. \u201cAs a tournament, we are ready,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re ready to break records in attendance, viewership and engagement. This is going to be the biggest global celebration of women\u2019s rugby that we have ever seen. I\u2019ve no doubt it\u2019s going to be inspirational. It\u2019s going to inspire the next generation of children, girls and boys and new fans, and bring them to this sport.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Crouch. Set. Re-engage. A sporting summer in which England\u2019s women have already taken centre stage begins a powerful…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":86241,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-86240","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\/86240","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=86240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}