Or check out our global guide to the TV options in your region<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\nEngland starting XV<\/strong>: 15. Ellie Kildunne, 14. Abby Dow, 13. Megan Jones, 12. Tatyana Heard, 11. Jessica Breach, 10. Zoe Harrison, 9. Natasha Hunt, 8. Alex Matthews, 7. Sadia Kabeya, 6. Zoe Aldcroft (C), 5. Abbie Ward, 4. Morwena Talling, 3. Maud Muir, 2. Amy Cokayne, 1. Hannah Botterman<\/p>\nReplacements: Lark Atkin-Davies, Kelsey Clifford, Sarah Bern, Rosie Galligan, Maddie Feaunati, Lucy Packer, Emily Scarratt, Emma Sing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
USA starting XV<\/strong>: 15. Charlotte ‘Lotte’ Sharp, 14. Emily Henrich, 13. Ilona Maher, 12. Alev Kelter, 11. Bulou Mataitoga, 10. Mckenzie Hawkins, 9. Olivia Ortiz, 8. Rachel Johnson, 7. Georgie Perris-Redding, 6. Kate Zachary (C), 5. Erica Jarrell-Searcy, 4. Tahlia Brody, 3. Keia Mae Sagapolu Sanele, 2. Kathryn Treder, 1. Hope Rogers<\/p>\nReplacements: Paige Stathopoulos, Alivia Leatherman, Charli Jacoby, Rachel Ehrecke, Freda Tafuna, Cassidy Bargell, Kristin Bitter, Sariah Ibarra<\/p>\n
England key playe<\/strong>r: Ellie Kildunne – the reigning World Rugby Women’s Player of the Year is a generational talent. Watch out for her devastating runs from full-back, thanks to her distinctive hair, you are unlikely to miss her.\u00a0<\/p>\nUSA key player<\/strong>: Kate Zachary – it is impossible to look past the influence of the Women’s Eagles skipper. The back-row forward, captaining for a second RWC in succession, is pure inspiration both sides of the ball.\u00a0<\/p>\nRecent head-to-heads<\/strong>:\u00a0
29.04.2024 ENG 61-21 USA
03.09.2022 ENG 52-14 USA
21.11.2021 ENG 89-0 USA<\/p>\nWhat they said<\/strong>:\u00a0<\/p>\nEngland head coach, John Mitchell:\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We try to build cohesion. We\u2019re not like the southern hemisphere teams which have had a lot rugby. We are just building so it\u2019s important you have combinations that the players are familiar with. We do have history together. Over the last three years something like 1,200 caps are spread among those girls and that\u2019s a lot of experience and a lot of belief and you have to play those cards in a tournament like this.<\/p>\n
“Every team will rise 10 or 15% because they\u2019re playing against England. That\u2019s what we expect. We realise we\u2019re hunted but we look forward to that as well.”<\/p>\n
England captain, Zoe Aldcroft:\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I\u2019m so excited, this week\u2019s been going at snail\u2019s pace waiting for Friday night. We have done all the talking for the last three years and it\u2019s time to put it into action now.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s super special to get 40,000 people. It\u2019s an incredible amount. It\u2019s great to be able to connect to that new audience and pull them in for the rest of the tournament.”<\/p>\n
USA head coach Sione Fukofuka:<\/p>\n
“From a team’s perspective, obviously we respect England immensely, we know how good they are. We also know there\u2019s a lot of pressure on them to perform so we are going to approach it with a clear head knowing that if we can control how we want to play, go out there and approach it with the fact that our strengths are strengths, we also have some pretty young strong weapons that we want to unleash on them.<\/p>\n
“We\u2019re here to get through our pool, to win two out of three games is the minimum, and get to a position where we can compete in the quarter-final and gives ourselves a shot of the semi. That\u2019s the nuts and bolts of it.”<\/p>\n
USA captain Kate Zachary:\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I\u2019m expecting a lot of ‘Go USA’ in the stands! In all seriousness, the atmosphere is going to be electric. They\u2019ve done a great job marketing this game. It\u2019s going to be a massive crowd.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“The outcomes this year, maybe we haven\u2019t got a lot of wins but it\u2019s because we\u2019ve chosen to take on top-four teams. We haven\u2019t chosen to take on teams we know we can beat. It\u2019s going to be a battle. There\u2019s going to be a lot of punches thrown and our goal is to put England up against the ropes a few times.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"England take on the USA on Friday, 22 August to kickoff the Women’s Rugby World Cup 2025. Hosts…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":360393,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5008],"tags":[748,393,4884,661,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-360392","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-england","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-text","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115063212241391156","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360392","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=360392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360392\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}