Welcome back to the Ruck, the journalist's rugby podcast from the Times and the Sunday Times, England, are unbeaten as expected,

and we are into the Women's World Cup quarterfinals. We are into the knockout stages. So all of that

and much more on the way. I'm Alfie Reynolds and Elgin Alderman. We are at Twickenham,

where at the end of September the Red Roses are going to be hoping to be crowned world champions. How are you? I'm very well, yes. It had a lovely weekend in Brighton for two very enjoyable fixtures, England versus Australia. We'll get into how England were tested slightly more than usual on Saturday. And then Sunday, that sea of green, the Irish crowd that had descended upon Brighton, as well as plenty of New Zealand and Blackfern's jerseys as well.

The Blackfern's really laying down a marker that, you know, can lightning strike for a sixth time, as I'm sure we'll discuss again in another possible England-New Zealand matchup at this stadium at Twickenham in on September 27th.

Yeah, you know we're going to be speaking about all of that.

We're also going to

be chatting to the managing director of the women's rugby world cup 2025, Sarah Massey. She's

going to join us on the podcast and we'll finish up with the rugby championship as well. Another

very intriguing round of fixtures there. But let's start off with England, Elgin. In the end,

47-7 victory, a 40-point

win for the Red Roses. If you didn't watch the game, you might look at that and say, well,

business as usual for John Mitchell's side. But certainly for half an hour of that game,

did we see proof that England can be troubled in this World Cup? And then I suppose my next question off the back of that

is, is there anyone that can trouble them for 80 minutes? So that was the second 30 match winning

sequence England have completed in the past six years. Of course, it would be a 61 match

winning sequence if they hadn't lost the World Cup final in between. In this most recent 30 wins,

there have probably been three games where they've been really tested in terms of a first half.

There was that WXV game against Canada where they were trailing until the final quarter of the

match. There was the Six Nations game against Ireland this year in which they were really struggling with what

Ireland were offering in the first half. And then Australia perhaps troubled them for that first

half an hour just as much, maybe more than on those two previous instances where Australia's

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