Rugby Club Issue 49 | Page 66

ENGLAND LADIES ENGLAND LADIES Having lost 3 previous World Cup Finals the England Women’s rugby team could be forgiven for entering their 4th consecutive final with a degree of caution. Having played well throughout the tournament they produced a powerful display to defeat Canada by 21 points to 9 to emerge victorious and claim the World Cup. Rugby Club Magazine caught up with their Captain, Katy Mclean to find out more about their success. She told us, “The last two weeks have been unbelievable – I don’t think we could ever have expected what would come from it. The amount of well-wishers that we’ve had has been absolutely amazing. We’ve had so many messages from friends, family and members of the public. Especially for women’s rugby this should help to put the game out there. The more successful team sports are the more coverage we can get and that should inspire the next generation of young people to go and take part in sports that they are aware of. I think the key to our success was that we got the little details right this time and that was massive for us. We improved throughout the tournament and our semi-final was probably our best display. We had the right processes in place 66 ISSUE 49 and the things that we’ve worked on as a team were implemented well on the pitch. Since January we’ve been really big on everyone knowing their roles inside and out so that we can make good decisions in the pressure situations. I think our previous experiences in past World Cups had the potential to either help or hinder our displays – it’s a credit to those players who’ve lost the finals in the past that they were able to turn those experiences into a positive to help us to be successful this time around. Up until 75 minutes the final was a really stressful game and it was quite a blur. I haven’t watched the game back just yet but at that point you looked at the clock and saw that we were 21-9 up and thought that’s it. We’ve won it. That was the first time I allowed myself to think that we’d won the