Sophie de Goede: 'I was back in purgatory. It’s been a long road'

There was plenty of excitement as Rugby Canada announced a two-match series with England’s Red Roses in October. Maybe no one was more excited than Sophie de Goede.

World Rugby’s Women’s 15s Player of the Year was front of centre as Rugby Rematch Tour [presented by Canadian Tire] matches in Toronto and Ottawa – which form part of the WXV Global Series – were confirmed this week. The fixtures mean that the Women’s Rugby World Cup 2025 finalists will be pitted against one another three times in 2026.

England will host the North Americans at Exeter’s Sandy Park in September, just a week shy of having beaten Kévin Rouet’s side in front of a world record crowd at Allianz Stadium the year prior. We have a best of three Test series on our hands.

The first fixture, which takes place at BMO Field on Friday 16 October, is a fixture already circled firmly in players’ calendars. Canada’s Women have not played in the Greater Toronto Area since 2009. No Test match of any sort has been played at the venue since 2016 when Canada’s Men lost 20-18 to Italy in a mid-year international.

In the 24 hours after the announcement over 3,000 people registered interest in purchasing a ticket. There is hope that 20,000 people will attend the fixture in five months’ time and smash continental record attendance for a women’s rugby international.

“I think this can be genuinely game-changing for us moving on from the World Cup, to be able to have this calibre of fixtures at home in major cities,” De Goede told RugbyPass.

“To be able to come back to Toronto, there’s so many commercial opportunities here and so many more eyeballs that come when you play games in Toronto. It’s so accessible for people from all across Canada.

“We should have a really good turnout. It’s just incredibly exciting to be able to come to Toronto. When we were announcing it there was such great energy grom the people in the city and great feedback online from people saying that they’re coming.”

Ottawa’s TD Place is a venue that has won the hearts of both Canada players and fans in the past year. The capital city was the venue of De Goede and her teammates’ send off for Women’s Rugby World Cup 2025.

Against the USA Women’s Eagles, the Canucks won 42-10 and set the current North American record for a standalone women’s rugby match as 11,453 filed into the stadium.

“There’s a real new openness to embracing rugby as a premiere sport and women’s rugby being one of our potential premiere national teams in Canada,” De Goede said.

“The fact we’re getting that attention, those eyeballs, from people we might not have otherwise, is a real testament to the momentum we’ve created from the World Cup.

“That’s why it’s so great that we have these games in a major city like Toronto, because we can hopefully double down on that momentum and keep it going.”

The whistlestop press tour to announce these fixtures is, staggeringly, De Goede’s first time back in Canada since that departure for England. Immediately after the Women’s Rugby World Cup final the 26-year-old went on a holiday to Portugal and then returned to London to link up with her Premiership Women’s Rugby club, Saracens.

So far this season her season with the North Londoners has been disjointed. Before jetting off to Southern California for the start of the Pacific Four Series, she had only managed two league appearances. The first in Round 1. The second came from the bench in Round 16 right before the Spring break.

 

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Sat in an Ottawa hotel, twiddling her keycard, De Goede does not deny her frustration at missing such a long stretch of the season as her right knee, the same knee that bares the scars of her torn ACL from 2024, continued to be a hinderance.

“I came back to training with Sarries and then, all of a sudden, my knee just swelled up,” she explained. “We thought it was just some irritation from changing surface and changing in load.

“We drained it to play the Gloucester [Hartpury] game, but it still didn’t feel right. Leading into the Bristol game I needed to shut it down. Got some imaging and there was a cartilage defect. Some cartilage had torn off.

“I had to get surgery on that and then it’s been a slow process to get the strength back in my quad and keep the inflammation at bay. It’s been pretty frustrating to spend another six months out of the game after spending 13 months out of the game a short while ago.

“I almost felt like the World Cup was a fever dream of two months being able to play rugby. Then I was back in purgatory. It’s been a long road.”

The end of that long road to recovery seemingly ended with Saracens’ 54-0 win against Sale Sharks at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium at the end of March.

Almost immediately after that game De Goede, and the rest of Canada’s England-based cohort, were on a flight to California. The Pacific Four Series waits for no one.

At the end of three weeks in the USA the Canadians were runners-up. Wins over the Eagles and Australia’s Wallaroos were undone by a 36-14 loss to New Zealand’s Black Ferns in Kansas City.

A repeat of the Women’s Rugby World Cup semi-final the teams played out last September, Whitney Hansen’s side pulled away from the second half to impede Canada’s efforts.

“It was kind of an up and down tour for the team,” De Goede said. “We had four days in Sacramento before our Test against Australia. You hit your stride the more time you spend together. We really started finding our groove and connection by that week against the US.

“We played a little bit more like we had during the World Cup. For myself, coming back from injury, I wasn’t happy with how I played in the Australia game. The New Zealand game was pretty medium and then got better in the US game.”

One aspect in which De Goede was pleased was the blooding of new Canadian talent. Across three weekends Chloe Daniels, Aurora Bowie, Kiki Idowu, Sierra Gillus, Brooke Rempel, Corinne Frechette and Lizzie Gibson all made their Test debuts as a new Women’s Rugby World Cup cycle got into full swing.

 

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Now there is a period of rest for De Goede. Kind of. After helping with promotion of The Rugby Rematch Tour, the goal-kicking forward is viewing May as a training block ahead of PWR’s return.

Saracens have already secured a PWR home semi-final and want to end a league title trophy drought that has extended into its fourth season. Replacing Gloucester Hartpury as the undisputed champions of England will be no mean feat.

A fully fit Sophie de Goede has been known to add a game-changing, world-beating quality to teams. One that Saracens will want to draw every ounce of.