On the face of it the England women’s rugby team have had a terrible year. Losing the Six Nations for the first time in seven years, beaten 3-0 in the series against New Zealand and dumped out of the Sevens World Cup in the quarter-finals. But delve deeper and you will find an England squad brimming with confidence. Are they deluded? No, it’s just part of their coach Gary Street’s masterplan to lift the World Cup in France next summer.
“From the outside all you see is loss, loss, loss,” says England’s star, Maggie Alphonsi, the first female player to be honoured with the Rugby Union Writers’ Club Pat Marshall player-of-the-year award, and back in the England set-up after a traumatic 20-month layoff with injury. “But from the inside I’m quite aware that what they’ve been doing is actually quite strategic and they’re doing it for a reason to make sure we’re ready for the World Cup. I think they’ve done the right thing. Now going in to the World Cup I feel we’ve got a really strong squad and good players who may not have had the opportunity to prove themselves before but have now.”
Street’s plan for 2013 was to divide the squad between Sevens and XVs, to test out his players’ mastery of the more compact game and give younger players a taste of international rugby. With the captain, Katy McLean, off to train with the Sevens – on a semi-professional basis for the first time in the sport – Sarah Hunter was given the task of captaining a weakened XV into the Six Nations. The campaign ended in disaster, with England losing to France and Ireland, and finishing third overall.
“It was challenging at times,” says Hunter, remembering the culture change from the split in November to that first game in February 2013. “It’s not easy losing in an England shirt, and we hadn’t really experienced it very much. Ireland was one of those games where nothing went right [England lost 25-0], it was really hard to pick the whole squad up and get them back up and running after that. You try and remind everyone that they’re still good-quality players – reiterating that especially to the younger players whose confidence is quite easily shattered as they hadn’t got many international caps. You have to say no, we can still go out there, you can still play.”
“The management has this long-term picture and it’s part of a journey to us hopefully lifting that 2014 trophy. Also we knew that we were hopefully giving the Sevens the best opportunity to lift that trophy as well, so it was about supporting them as well. It was looking at this [being] the best situation to have the opportunity to lift both trophies.”
McLean captained the Sevens in Moscow where England lost to New Zealand in the knockout stages, but the captain is upbeat about the lessons learned from such an experiment.
“I think looking back it will be something that for us was a massive turning point, because coming out of the autumn internationals last year we’d been undefeated in Six Nations [since 2006]. Basically England could turn up and win pretty much any tournament –we’d beaten New Zealand five times in the series, we were literally like: ‘Oh we can sit in our chairs and put our feet up until the World Cup.’ I think there was a big danger of us subconsciously doing that.
“We don’t want to, come August 2014, be sitting there thinking: ‘I really wish we’d learned the lessons we had the opportunity to learn in 2013,’” McLean said. One element of Street’s plan was to ensure each position had more than one good player to fill it and so Marlie Packer, a flanker like Alphonsi who performed well in New Zealand, the centre Amber Reed and the uncapped Sasha Acheson, who has impressed for Bristol this season, have been included in this autumn internationals’ squad.
England face France on Saturday, before taking on Canada on 13 November at The Stoop. Both fixtures have an element of a grudge match about them as France inflicted England’s first Twickenham defeat in the Six Nations at the beginning of the year, while Canada beat England in the summer to lift the Nations Cup. Both matches will take place after the men’s games, with Sky also screening the women’s games in 3D for the first time. “The mood in the camp’s really positive,” says Alphonsi who is thrilled to be back in the international set-up having already slotted back into her role at Saracens. “People looking from the outside will probably think: ‘Oh they’ve lost a load of games, how are they going to feel going into next year?’ But if I’m honest everyone’s really buzzing and up for it.
“I feel like we’ve come to the end of the building period. Now going into this year the priority is to make sure we’ve got a good strong team ready to take on the autumn internationals and the World Cup. The autumn internationals will give us a good indication of where we are.”
England v France women’s international, live on Sky Sports 3D, Saturday 5pm
England women eager to reap benefits of rugby division against France
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