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Great Britain confirmed as eighth women’s team set for SVNS Grand Final

Rhona Lloyd of Great Britain runs away to score against Fiji at SVNS Singapore. Picture: World Rugby,

Great Britain are the eighth and final women’s side to book their ticket to the SVNS Series’ inaugural Grand Final in Madrid even though they were beaten in the Singapore quarter-finals by New Zealand.

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New Zealand, Australia, France, the USA, Canada, Ireland and Fiji had already secured their place in the winner-takes-all finale from May 31 to June 2, and Great Britain were in the box seat to join them before play even started in Singapore.

The British occupied eighth place on the overall standings ahead of the Series’ final regular season event this weekend but had Brazil and a couple of others running the same race to the Spanish capital.

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With Great Britain and the ninth-placed Brazil drawn in the same pool at Singapore’s National Stadium, their clash on Saturday morning was always going to have huge ramifications on the Series.

It was one of Great Britain’s strongest performances of the 2023/24 season with Heather Cowell, Jasmin Joyce, Isla Norman-Bell (double) and Emma Uren all crossing for five-pointers.

Try scoring machine Thaila Costa crossed for Brazil’s only try of the contest in the 2nd minute – it was also the opening points of the match – but it was one-way traffic from there with GB winning 35-5.

“We knew this tournament was important but we took each game (by game) and Brazil was our main focus coming in,” Great Britain’s Isla Norman-Bell told RugbyPass

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“We put out a great performance and we’re really happy with that.

“We can’t control what else has happened throughout so we’ve just got to move on to the next game and hopefully get as many points as possible.

“We were all really disappointed with how yesterday had gone but we knew that today was a new opportunity and we’re just really excited,” she added.

“We knew that we’d put in the work behind the scenes and we had analysed Brazil so we knew exactly what we were going to do coming into this game.

“I think that’s all we could be worried about. We did that on the pitch and we got a great score from that.”

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If SVNS Singapore had played out the way most would’ve predicted then that would’ve been enough for Great Britain to lock up eighth spot, but as is the nature of the Series, competition is unpredictable.

Over in Pool B, Japan bounced back from a heavy 41-7 defeat to France on day one to shock the USA and South Africa. Japan won two pool matches in a single tournament for the first time in a decade.

That made things a lot more interesting but with Japan and Great Britain both going on to lose their respective quarter-finals, GB were officially confirmed as a Madrid-bound Grand Finalist.

“We as GB have quite a challenge in ourselves. We aren’t together every single day like most, well I think all the other teams,” Norman-Bell explained.

“Our coach needed to see people this season and that’s why our team was so inconsistent. We had different players playing but he ultimately had to see.

“The Olympics is the big one this year and going to the Olympics and having the strongest team is what it’s all about.”

Catch up on all the latest SVNS Series action from the 2023/24 season on RugbyPass TV. SVNS Singapore is live and free to watch, all you need to do is sign up HERE.

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H
Hellhound 1 hour ago
France put World Cup pain behind them with unbeaten run in November

France is starting to look like they are finally over their WC headache, although they were lucky that NZ had a very bad game. The Argies as usual is one game good, the next bad. If they can sort that out and be more consistent, they could become contenders for the WC.


NZ, Argentina (if they are more consistent), and now the Wallabies too is in an upward curve (can they be consistent?), as well as Fiji(as inconsistent as Argentina) looks like possible contenders. The Boks will be as usual a huge threat to defend their title. Things are looking up for the South, so the North should rightfully beware of the Southern Hemisphere threat.


With the French looking dangerous, the English with their close runs (mostly a mindset problem) and the Scottish seems to be the NH main contenders. The Irish is good, but not excellent anymore. They are more overbearing and with their glory days mostly gone with old players hanging on by a thread, by 2027 if they don't start adding in the younger players, they won't make it past yet another WC Quarter final. The problem is that their youngsters, while good is nothing special.


That is just 8 teams without the Irish that can become real WC contenders. Lots of hickups to be sorted still for these teams, excluding the Boks to become a threat. Make no mistake, the top Tier is much closer than people realise and the 2027 WC will be a really great WC, possibly the best contended WC ever.

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