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Recent history: How the last three meetings between Canada v New Zealand played out
By Joe Harvey
Friday night’s 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup semi-final encounter between Canada and New Zealand is set to be a colossal clash.
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It is the perfect curtain raiser for the weekend that will decide the two finalists that will contend for silverware on Saturday 27th September at Twickenham Stadium. And in the North Americans and Black Ferns, the world will get to see the second and third-ranked teams in women’s rugby go toe-to-toe.
Over the past three years Kévin Rouet, Canada’s head coach, and Allan Bunting, New Zealand’s Director of Performance, have seen their teams win a clash each and draw once as regular opponents in the Pacific Four Series.
This included Canada’s first-ever win against the six-time World Cup champions in 2024 which helped the Canucks climb to second in the World Rugby rankings.
Recent history does only tell part of a story. New Zealand have only ever lost one World Cup semi-final before at the first-ever edition of the tournament in 1991.
After that third place finish over three decades ago, the women in Black have been world champions six times and had their worst World Cup campaign 11 years ago in France when they finished fifth.
“It’s positive that it’s not, ‘we’ve never beaten them before’,” Sophie de Goede said on Saturday.
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“We have one win under our belt. I think you still look at history and it probably favours the Black Ferns. Well, definitely favours the Black Ferns.
“They’ve been incredible. They’re always incredible at World Cups. They always perform on the big stages. I think we won’t be looking too far into the past and we’ll just be focusing on Friday and putting in our performance.”
Canada come into Friday night’s game fresh from beating Australia 46-5 in the quarter-finals, while the Black Ferns had to rely on a strong second half showing to overcome a stern South Africa challenge at Sandy Park.
Just to much as Canada’s top player may not want to consult the form book, here is a look anyway…
2025 | New Zealand 27-27 Canada
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The penultimate round of this year’s Pacific Four Series ended in a first draw between the teams.
Braxton Sorensen-McGee opened the scoring in just the fifth minute to offer some insight into a star getting ready to emerge at this year’s World Cup.
In many ways both teams will have felt aggrieved in not winning the game. Canada scored five tries and converted one, while Ruahei Demant’s missed conversion with the clock in the red for Sylvia Brunt’s late try.
For Canada they were left rueing four missed conversions from the boot of Julia Schell.
Able to impose their fast, attacking style of play it was the North Americans that enjoyed the better of things. It was only because of the Black Ferns’ doggedness that Bunting’s team got anything out of the 80 minutes.
2024 | New Zealand 19-22 Canada
Depending on how Canada’s World Cup campaign ends in the early autumn, this night in Christchurch may go down as Rouet’s magnum opus.
From start to finish Canada seemed to have the work-rate to overcome their hosts at Apollo Projects Stadium. And the contest had a little bit of everything too.
New Zealand’s Katelyn Vaha’akolo and Canada’s Fancy Bermudez both crossed the whitewash twice each, as did Patricia Maliepo and McKinley Hunt.
What ultimately proved to be the difference was Sophie de Goede’s seventh minute penalty which opened the scoring.
On top of moving second in the World Rugby rankings, thanks in part to this result, Canada went on to win that year’s Pacific Four Series, finished second in their home WXV 1 and saw de Goede, Alex Tessier and Laetitia Royer named in the World Rugby Women’s 15s Dream Team of the Year.
2023 | Canada 21-52 New Zealand
Only two years ago that there was clear daylight between these two titans of the sport.
At TD Place Stadium in Ottawa, the Black Ferns scored eight tries to the Canadians’ three. Luka Connor, Demant, Mererangi Paul, Amy du Plessis, Renee Holmes and Kelsey Teneti all made their way over the whitewash in a devastating display of attacking dominance in Ontario.
So far as Canada were concerned it was a continuation of the same. In all of their previous 16 meetings prior to that day the closest margin between the two teams had been eight points, in the first of a two-match Test series in 2014.
Little did anyone know exactly how much things were going to change.
