The USA Women’s Eagles will face the four time defending World Champions New Zealand in the third round of Pool Play in the Women’s Rugby World Cup on Saturday. New Zealand is coming off of a shocker where 7th ranked Ireland stole the limelight with a victory of 17-14 AND broke a winning streak of 20+ matches! This defeat is arguably the most important women’s rugby match in history! Now the USA looks towards the New Zealand Black Ferns and we aren’t sure which is worse…to have to play New Zealand ever or to play them after they’ve just been thorned in the side…

Now that Ireland has done the unthinkable, teams are quickly realizing that maybe the Black Ferns aren’t as strong as in the past. England’s Captain Katy McLean has come out saying that they believe that the Fern’s are not invincible and this is the time for their defeat. Has New Zealand women’s rugby slowed down, or are other nations catching up? We feel it is a number of factors including under-funding, lack of support and lack of publicity. This has especially hit the Black Ferns as the New Zealand Rugby Union announced that the National Provincial Competition (NPC) would have budget cuts in 2010. True, some additional funding has come through for the Ferns, but nothing like they should receive for winning every WRWC but one.

USA has faced New Zealand before with their first meeting at the 1991 World Cup where they defeated the Ferns by a narrow margin of 7-0. USA then went on to defeat England in the WRWC Championship 19-6. From then on, New Zealand has ruled the Women’s Rugby World Cup defeating USA again in 1998 and England in 2002, 2006 and 2010.

Since the start of USA’s campaign to return to the Women’s Rugby World Cup the team made a goal to reach the Cup Finals again in 2014. Upon learning their fate and being placed in “pool of death” with Ireland, Kazakhstan and NZ, USA head Coach Pete Steinberg commented “We would need to beat New Zealand” and after their win over Kazakhstan said “that is where we are, we hope to be healthy and know that recovery is going to be critical.”

The USA is standing on the edge of history, and everything is at their fingertips. If USA can keep up the physical battle at the ruck and set pieces AND have their backs coming from depth and space, they can become the second team to make history at this World Cp. However, they don’t need to just win, they need a bonus point and an Irish loss against Kazakhstan wouldn’t hurt either.

Officially our prediction is that New Zealand will win this match but we hope that the USA Eagles can prove us wrong and keep their campaign for #Finalin14 alive. Good luck to both teams.

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