Rugby’s most outspoken and influential journalist
LET’S START with the stakes. England must win the women’s Rugby World Cup, which starts on 8 October. For them, for various reasons, it is everything or nothing. If they don’t take the title, there is nothing else available from this event that they are allowed to count as a success. No second best, no hard lines, no unlucky breaks. Win or nothing.
And here are the answers to two questions you may now be asking. Why am I calling it the women’s Rugby World Cup? And why am I setting such a brutal standard?
Here goes. It is preposterous and mistaken and confusing as hell not to call it the women’s Rugby World Cup at a time when in rugby league there is both a men’s and a women’s (and a wheelchair) World Cup upcoming, and at a time when the men’s tournament in union is looming.
Go online and you will
