A record crowd for a Women’s Rugby World Cup opening match is expected with more than 40,000 tickets sold for the game at Stadium of Light.<\/p>\n
England, who are favourites to win the tournament, are on a 27-game winning run, with their last defeat coming against New Zealand in the 2022 World Cup final.<\/p>\n
“We have been building nicely into the tournament and now we’re excited to get our campaign under way,” Mitchell said.<\/p>\n
“Sunderland has been a great host city thus far and we know it’ll be a record crowd for a Women’s Rugby World Cup opening match which shows the appetite for rugby in this region and for the competition ahead.<\/p>\n
“We want to embrace the occasion while understanding we have to earn the right to progress through the pool stage.”<\/p>\n
Locks Abbie Ward and Morwenna Talling continue in the second row, with Hannah Botterman, Amy Cokayne and Maud Muir making up the front row.<\/p>\n
Vice-captain Megan Jones starts alongside established midfield partner Tatyana Heard, while Natasha Hunt and Zoe Harrison are again the preferred half-back combination.<\/p>\n
Jessica Breach, Abby Dow and Ellie Kildunne scored a combined 18 tries in last year’s Six Nations and form a lethal back three.<\/p>\n
Kelsey Clifford, Maddie Feaunati and Emma Sing are set for their World Cup debuts from the bench.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A record crowd for a Women’s Rugby World Cup opening match is expected with more than 40,000 tickets…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":359567,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4102],"tags":[4151,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-359566","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115061442855361228","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=359566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359566\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/359567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}