England to play New Zealand and France ahead of Women’s Rugby World Cup

England’s Crimson Roses will start a close to year-long run as much as the 2025 Ladies’s Rugby World Cup with matches at dwelling to main rivals New Zealand and France.

Invoice Sweeney, the chief government of England’s governing Rugby Soccer Union, stated Tuesday the fixtures will type a part of the build-up for the annual WXV1 elite ladies’s event in Canada later this yr.

AN RFU spokesman informed AFP the dates and venues for the 2 video games had been anticipated to be introduced “within the subsequent few weeks”.

The Crimson Roses are the reigning WXV1 champions and the matches with New Zealand, presently ranked second on this planet and third-placed France will even function an early type information for a 2025 World Cup in England.

Sweeney was talking throughout an occasion in Bristol, southwest England, which marked 500 days earlier than the beginning of the World Cup, as he hailed a “transformational” legacy programme for the event that might assist the RFU obtain its ambition of 100,000 feminine gamers by 2027.

Greater than £12 million has been dedicated to ‘Impression ’25 by the British Authorities.

“In case you take a look at ladies’s sport, what’s occurring with the Lionesses in soccer and also you see it throughout cricket as properly, it’s right here to remain and we’d like to verify it grows as rapidly as attainable,” stated Sweeney.

The Crimson Roses have grow to be the dominant power within the Ladies’s Six Nations after turning skilled a lot sooner than their European rivals.

They’ve gained the event for 5 successive years, with solely a change in format in a Covid-hit 2021 stopping them finishing a Grand Slam on every event.

This season, England have already recorded thumping wins over Italy and Wales heading into Saturday’s third-round match away to Scotland.

England additionally gained 30 Checks in a row from November 9, 2019 to November 5, 2022 in opposition to all opponents.

That document streak got here to an finish with an agonising 34-31 loss to event hosts New Zealand within the Covid-delayed 2022 Ladies’s World Cup remaining in Auckland.

The 2025 World Cup begins on August 22. Twickenham, the RFU’s headquarters floor in southwest London, will stage the ultimate with the goal of breaking the present world document attendance of 58,498 for a ladies’s Take a look at match set final yr when England performed France.

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