Women’s Rugby World Cup organisers have said there is no room for online hate in the game, after the Wales back-row Georgia Evans was sent abuse for wearing a bow in her hair.

Yvonne Nolan, the competition director of England 2025, also hailed the sport’s community response after Evans released a statement last week saying she had been labelled “childish” for her regular gameday look and told it was not one “of a rugby player”.

It sparked fan support during Wales’s defeat against Fiji on Saturday with volunteers setting up a ribbon-making station and 1,200 worn by supporters during the final pool game.

Nolan pointed towards the formal process the tournament has in place in a partnership with the Signify Group using technology to remove abusive comments. “We do have a social media monitoring protection tool and that is action based,” Nolan said.

“It monitors, takes down and if it reaches the right level we aim for prosecution. That is a deterrent and an action-based impact. But it is important to say, this is a drop in the ocean. This is a societal issue.

“For me the biggest impact at the weekend was watching that spontaneous volunteer-led ribbon station process. Spontaneously self-policing society is saying we won’t tolerate that, there is no place for that in our game. We don’t need a formal process to make that happen. That is us coming together as a rugby community to say it is not welcome in our sport.

“In our sport you can be who you want to be. For me that is the most powerful tool that we have and will affect social change.”

Speaking after Wales’s defeat in Exeter, Evans outlined the impact of the abuse. “It’s tough because when we sign up to this as a professional athlete, you sign up for the scrutiny of your performance and what people think of you, I can take that as an athlete,” she told the BBC. “But there is no space for derogatory comments, for hate or for any kind of abuse on social media.

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“It’s bigger than a bow, it’s bigger than the game and it’s bigger than myself … the support has been absolutely incredible. We haven’t put the performance in that we would have liked and we haven’t come away with what we wanted. I’m heartbroken but heartwarmed at the same time by every single person who chose to wear a bow.”

Wales are out of the competition after three defeats in the pool stage.