Canada v England: How have Canada closed gap to Red Roses?


Beyond the emotional, there are also structural elements that Canada have right.

Head coach Kevin Rouet, along with plenty of his players, have been gaining experience in England’s PWR.

While Canada lacks a professional women’s domestic league, England’s is the strongest in the world, giving Rouet’s players a level of training and match experience they cannot find anywhere else.

Canada have brought in some exciting new talents since the last Rugby World Cup who will be interesting teams on this side of the Atlantic.

Number eight Lizzie Gibson made her Test debut in April and has been a hard-carrying option at the base of the scrum.

England have also been forced to blood new options.

With regular captain Zoe Stratford, second rows Abbie Ward and Rosie Galligan, and back row Marlie Packer all absent, and wing Abby Dow retired, they have not got the same depth or experience of a year ago.

What is harder to discern than the on-pitch inaccuracies is the Red Roses’ psychological state.

For so long, they have been out on their own at the top of the women’s game.

For many of their fixtures over the past four years, they have set internal statistical goals to strive for, because victory was all but a given.

To find the motivation to push on uphill after summiting the mountain of a home World Cup is hard.

The squad rallied round to produce a backs-to-the-wall defence of their Six Nations title in the immediate aftermath, but perhaps this defeat is both a symptom of, and a cure for, a lack of obvious goals to chase.

The rematch of the rematch – on Friday in Ottawa – is surely the perfect fuel to fire up England.



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