Welcome back to The Ruck, the journalist's rugby podcast from The Times and the Sunday Times.

And today we are in Bristol, ahead of the semifinals at the Women's Rugby World Cup this weekend.

Alfie here, along with Elgin, Elgin, a busy weekend of action to look back on the final for the semifinals to look ahead to.

How are you?

Yeah, I'm very well.

I think we've converged upon the big four converging upon the semifinals, rather,

the four teams we expected to get this far, three quarterfinal wins that were fairly run in the mill,

and one very exciting match at Sandy Park, where France, for a long time, looked like they wouldn't quite make it through,

and some controversy that came out of that match as well that I'm sure we'll be talking about very soon. Absolutely. Also coming up, we're going to be speaking to the England's second row player of the match in the quarterfinal victory over Scotland, Morwenna Talling. Looking forward to chatting to her, Elgin, because I think there are so many stars of this Red Rose's team. I think she is a player playing exceptionally well,

but actually, well, certainly before last weekend was going under the radar, I don't think you if you're going under the radar anymore when you get a player of the match award, but someone that doesn't get as many of the headlines as many of the other players in this Red Rose's team. Certainly coming into the tournament, I think a lot of people wouldn't necessarily have had her as a starter. It just so happens that she stayed in the team while Zoe Oldcroft, the captain, was undergoing treatment for that knee injury that kept her out of two matches. It means that we've seen Molyneux play Blindside Flanker and then switch to lock and stay in the team ahead of Abby Ward, who is one of the bigger names, one of the established veterans in the team. So to see more when her stay in the team shows how she is regarded now as a real sort of off-the-ball work rate enforcer, as it were, and her carrying was hugely to the fall last weekend for that player of the match performance. So she's really thrown herself forward now as one of the main names in this England team as we approach to semifinals.

So we'll be chatting to her very, very shortly.

We'll also speak about the rugby championship.

What another unbelievable round of fixtures and results in that competition.

And we are here at the moment on the outskirts of Bristol at the England Team Hotel.

This is where they were based last week ahead of the

quarterfinal and based this week in the build-up to the semi-final as well. Elgin, what was the

standout result for you in the quarter-finals? The four teams that we probably expected to get through,

but what was it that really stood out for you in terms of those results? Three of the matches were

fairly one-sided, I suppose, the New Zealand and South Africa game for a time. The Springbok women really had the Black Ferns under the pump. It's one of those games where the last thing South Africa wanted was half-time to come because it enables a team to reset to figure out what's going on. At 10 all, that was a half-time result that no one quite saw coming, but then the Blackfern

started with three tries in seven minutes, and we got the result we were expecting thereafter.

So you'd have to look at France Island, where Ireland were leading 13-0 in, you know, howling wind,

rain down at Exeter, but then for France to show their metal to come through, to win that one 1813.

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