Australia<\/a> for a long time,\u201d Chancellor told reporters in Sydney.<\/p>\n\u201cTo get knocked off with a few games is a good humbling experience, it\u2019s a good way to learn how to come back from losses and work out how to flick that mentality shift. And I think we did that really well coming into this game.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re playing against another team that\u2019s won a three-peat. We\u2019re playing against another really successful team. It\u2019s a great opportunity to butt heads with the best on this side of the world so we\u2019re excited.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe haven\u2019t really built on a mindset of being an underdog and we never really took an underdog mentality into the semi-final or the final, but we just took it with a chip on or shoulder. We\u2019ve got a redemption to do this week so maybe that\u2019s the mindset rather than underdog.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Waratahs have now won seven Super Rugby Women\u2019s titles in less than 10 years, but their road to championship glory in 2026 was anything but smooth. Both the Western Force and arch-rivals the Queensland Reds secured maiden wins over New South Wales.<\/p>\n
Those defeats saw the Tahs finish third on the ladder, while the Drua and Force occupied the top two spots. The Drua went on to host the decider after beating the Reds in the semi-finals, while the Tahs have travelled a fair way.<\/p>\n
The Tahs overcame the Force in Perth in the Super Rugby Women\u2019s semi-finals, before taking on the Drua in Ba. It\u2019s been a challenging year for the serial champions, but as Chancellor discussed, some positives have come out of the season.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve had such great opportunity to grow a little bit more depth in our program this year than we have in previous years,\u201d Chancellor said.<\/p>\n
\u201cInjuries create opportunities. We talk about that all the time. You know that one person out for a couple of weeks gives someone else an opportunity to step up.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou build depth from the opportunity in the misfortune of injury, so that\u2019s a big one that we\u2019ve seen as a growth in the players in the wider squad.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut with that came the challenge of them people feeling like maybe they didn\u2019t deserve it or maybe they hadn\u2019t built the mindset that they were good enough this season.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe talked a lot about that towards the end of the season, when we had our little hiccups in terms of results, and we said that everyone\u2019s been picked in this squad of 30 because you are the best 30 in New South Wales, not because you\u2019re the understudy to someone else. You are the best person to be in this room.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s been the way we shifted our mindset into how we do the extras, how we focus on those little details.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published: 15 hours ago | 31 July 2026 20:57 EDT Updated: 15 hours ago | 31 July 2026…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":554937,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-554936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=554936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554936\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/554937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=554936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=554936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=554936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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