RWC 2025

Pools with rankings and rankings points as at 17 October 2024

Pool A
England (1) 97.56
Australia (5) 78.10 -19.46
USA (9) 74.20 -3.9
Samoa (15) 60.56 -13.64

Pool B
Canada (2) 89.31
Scotland (7) 76.82 -12.49
Wales (10) 72.58 -4.24
Fiji (17) 59.14 -13.44

Pool C
New Zealand (3) 88.64
Ireland (6) 78.03 -10.61
Japan (11) 66.41 -11.62
Spain (13) 65.42 -0.99

Pool D
France (4) 85.11
Italy (8) 74.75 -10.36
South Africa (12) 66.18 -8.57
Brazil (42) 39.73 -26.45

France got a very soft draw, but New Zealand may be looking a little warily at Ireland.
The most likely upsets would look to be Spain vs Japan, USA vs Australia and Wales vs Scotland.

Not the most exciting draw we could have had, but a balanced one - and a lot can change over the next year.

I think that the only top-ranked team not happy with that draw is the Black Ferns. Ireland will have their tails up that's for sure.

Hoping to get to at least one of the pool matches.

Looking at the draw again this morning:
- England will have some very physical matches, but I think they might be pleased to have drawn Australia and the US, who are close enough in the rankings that each team will know that they have to focus more on the Aus-US game than on beating England.

- New Zealand’s pool is the tightest overall, and the other teams in the pool are all potentially vulnerable to each other. How competitive the NZ-Ireland game is may depend on where it comes in the tournament

- Scotland and Wales are closely matched. Wales have had a bad year this year but they have the player pool to do much better. Again, will they have to focus on each other rather than Canada?

- France’s pool looks the most straightforward of the lot… except that South Africa are launching their women’s pro league next year, which could make a huge difference to how ready they are for the tournament. The only thing they won’t have much of is exposure to the top teams until the tournament itself, but that could work in their favour.

South Africa have some good players, the wings are big, fast and strong and the pack are like the mens team. Enormous plus they deploy a similar bomb squad of front row change after 50 mins.
If they continue progress and get support, SA be a real threat for next WXV and RWC 2029.

England toughish group but be fine. USA will test them but unless wheels come off badly Eng should top group comfortably.

Overall has to be between Eng, Can and NZ.

The full match schedule is out and pre-sale has begun:

https://www.world.rugby/news/966667/womens-rugby-world-cup-2025-match-schedule-confirmed

There looks to be at least one potentially close match each weekend, mostly in Pools C & D. NZ v Ireland on the final day of the pool stage could both be the pick of the games - though and France v South Africa has potential if South Africa get a boost from finally having more professional players.

I thought it might be worth an update on ticket sales. So far what we know is:

- "Over 400,000" tickets went on sale
- But the (capacity of all the stadiums) x (the matches each is hosting) is just over 600,000, which suggests that they are not aiming for full capacity
- All 130,000 allocated tickets were sold during pre-sale
- Over 100,000 tickets were applied for in the first week of the main sale window, with a couple of weeks still to go for applications.

...so somewhere between 38% and 58% of the available tickets had been sold at the last count, but when the ticket allocations drop on 2 Dec we will know if they have hit their targets.