THERE WAS really only one place to start. England’s gut-wrenching defeat in this season’s World Cup final after a record-breaking 30-game winning run when they looked untouchable. In the match that mattered more than any other, New Zealand pipped them 34-31 after benefiting from an extra player from the 18th minute.
“I’m not sure I’ll ever be at peace with how the World Cup ended,” Claudia MacDonald tells us over coffee at the four-star hotel at Sandy Park. “Having said that, I’ve certainly moved on from it. I’m very much stuck into the Chiefs. The season, the next game that we have, whatever the competition is. I think that was my error at the last World Cup. I was so fixated on it for three or four years; the way that I was training, what I was or wasn’t prioritising, was looking forward to that World Cup. And it’s not healthy to put so much weight on one occasion. You forget to enjoy everything that happens along the way.”
The Exeter wing refutes the suggestion that Lydia
