England women's national rugby union team

That's obviously a bit concerning if we're expecting ourselves to go and compete against them.

I think we do take Farrell for granted though in terms of you look at how distraught the English were when he signed the new contract, those at Saracens, but then I think people that are just thinking about the wider England picture would see him as a head coach in the future for them as well.

he's such a he's a brilliant head coach and listen you mentioned conor murray there and peter martini spoke so glowingly about him um in his book and you know he was asked um you know out of joe schmidt i think technically he was thrown there and a few different razzy and whoever else peter has been coached by over the years and he's thrown far at the top no questions asked

Yeah, I think it's always harsh on Joe Smith.

I think Ireland are probably in a better spot going into this home advantage.

I think there's more consistency obviously in their management.

Like Sean Edwards isn't even with Argentina yet because he's over in England with the English women's team.

So there's a little impact that he can really make, particularly at the start of it.

Emily Ross's career has centred on achieving excellence, always improving and finding ways to boost athlete availability.

She led the physiotherapy provision for England rugby's Red Roses across two World Cup campaigns.

Her achievements with the Red Roses include completing four unbeaten Autumn International Series and six consecutive title-winning Women's Six Nation Tournaments, including five Grand Slam campaigns, a silver medal in the 2022 Rugby World Cup in New Zealand, and winning gold at the Women's Rugby World Cup 2025 on home soil.

Today, Emily shares her experiences and her advice for breaking into and sustaining a fulfilling career in elite sport.

Emily Ross, welcome to JOSPT Insights.

So protecting an athlete's health is a performance strategy, not just an afterthought.

So that comes from your mental wellbeing being a performance strategy rather than something that you pick up after you've dealt with injuries.

Certainly with the Red Roses, our monitoring system incorporated like a psychological and a physical algorithm where you could get a balance of how they were recovering on both sort of aspects and it was individualized.

Two parts of it is what we've actually got for you.

And of course, he was part of the Red Roses coaching staff over the last few weeks.

So he's going to take us into their camp.

And we did just tease you there, of course, the former Scotland captain, Lisa Martin, who's with us now.

different numbers of games home and away as well for some.

Part of this was, in particular England, they wanted to get their home games back.

They didn't like the old WXV competition that they had to go away somewhere because obviously they're getting to a point now where they're going, okay, these Red Roses are going to start making some money for us at home and they're building that fan base.

And that's got to go on that graph in a certain trajectory if you hold on to those home games.

played the England Red Roses.

Who? The women, the English Red Roses? What did they do to the Americans?

After having played three test matches with Canada, the Red Roses, who had a 40-game winning in the world in women's rugby.

They were number two.

So someone still thinks rugby...

Well, those are the old guys.

I don't know if it's rugby, English rugby, but certainly Owen Farrell's way up there.

Mara Toji, those guys are way up there.

But one thing I think that the leadership group of the Canadian forwards need to look at is how they talk to the referee.

Because there was clear illegal binding going on from the English tighthead.

uh so she was not the first game she didn't uh allow the loose head prop whoever it was nelson or castle to get a bind on the body so she was binding over the top and essentially not allowing uh castle more um more frequently to get her arm up and onto the body and what that does is when you've got your arm tucked into your into your side it makes it easier for that tight head prop to bring their arm down on top of you and actually collapse you so it looks like you're going down first but uh it's actually that bind there so uh having the props talk to or any one of the leaders or even just to the ref directly and say, I'm not able to get a bind here.

I think that happened later in the game, but that's something they should have been pointing out over and over and over again.

Picking up on what Jeff said about the kicking, Soman Atapa said, I think she was brought in.

You saw on a couple of her kicks that she's got a much longer kicking game than anybody in the Canadian backline, including Tessier.

Tessier, she's accurate, but her long kicking game is not even close compared to the English kickers, Harrison, Kildon.

All of them have got a much bigger kicking game.

the Black Ferns forward and I think what we'll see next year leading into that Lions series is a much more connected team that I think will really put on a massive performance when the Lions come down for the very first time.

Abby, we want to move on to rugby league, obviously, but just before we go, the English Roses had a 39-match winning streak.

41 matches unbeaten if you include two draws, right? Canada have beaten them twice in quick succession.

That's really exciting for women's rugby, isn't it? The emergence of Canada as a genuine power.

And I think the level as a whole rises, doesn't it?

Yeah, also to see England being mauled off the field by Canada.

I mean, to see that English scrum under real pressure, really something to behold.

We're going to change codes a little bit.

No.

World champions Zoe Harrison and Megan Jones of England.

They, of course, are nominated for World 15's Player of the Year.

But also Delika Manin, who is the Canadian player who plays for Exeter Chiefs.

Now, she's the tight-haired prop that's come around and changed things very much for when Canada play England.

I watched them on the weekend.

They are confident against that England Roses team.

You can see that now the Canadians are like, no, no, no, you can't beat us.