Black Ferns: ‘The expectation from the public back home is we’d come here and win’

New Zealand are “feeling pretty confident” after passing their first Test at the 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup with a 54-8 win over Spain, but the defending champions are well aware of the high expectations set for them by fans back home.

At the time of writing, the World Cup final is one month away to the day. With still a lot of rugby to be played at the showpiece event, there comes an ever-growing sense of pressure that rests on the shoulders of Black Ferns players and management.

After taking out the Pacific Four Series title with wins over Australia and the USA, and a thrilling draw with world number two Canada in Christchurch, the New Zealanders started their bid for a seventh World Cup crown with a clinical win over Spain.

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New Zealand Women’s superstar Portia Woodman-Wickliffe spoke to RugbyPass after receiving the prestigious, inaugural RugbyPass Women’s Top 50 award this week.

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Jorja Miller scored the team’s first two tries of the tournament, but the second half is where the women in black made their mark. Ayesha Leti-I’iga crossed for a double, with the New Zealanders piling on 33 unanswered points.

Spain had the last laugh, with Ines Antolinez Fernandez running in for the team’s sole try of the Test in the 81^st minute, but the point-scoring damage had been done by the Black Ferns. That was the first step towards their goal of retaining the Women’s Rugby World Cup.

“This is a different World Cup and teams have been performing really well. If we go back to last year we were beaten by Ireland, Canada and England so they’re candidates, with England probably being the form team this year coming into this World Cup,” defence coach Steve Jackson told reporters in Exeter.

“We also want to write our own history and again we are just taking it game by game not thinking anything further than Japan this week.

“If we can get the consistency in our game then, hopefully, we will be there or thereabouts again. The past is the past; we celebrated those World Cup wins and moved on. We have a job to do over the next few weeks to get the outcome we want.

“Every team is here to win the World Cup, and we are no different. The expectation from the public back home is that we’d come here and win the World Cup.

“We know what stages to get through first and when we get through those we can reassess where we are at.”

Next up for the New Zealanders is Japan at Sandy Park. Japan were beaten 42-14 by Ireland last time out, with Haruka Hirotsu and Masami Kawamura scoring one try each, while Ayasa Otsuka went two-from-two with conversion attempts.

That’s the next challenge for the Black Ferns, who will round out pool play the following week against Ireland in Brighton. The Irish beat the New Zealanders in WXV last year, but the Black Ferns are feeling confident at this stage.

“We are feeling pretty confident but we aren’t taking Japan lightly. We will be going out there to put our best foot forward and put a performance on that we can be proud of, but Japan will be a difficult side to play,” Jackson said.

“There are things in our game that we need to tidy up which we will work on this week. If we do that really well we should hopefully get the desired outcome. We are under no illusions; Japan will be tough.

“In the Spanish game, they came out with a lot of passion in the first 20 minutes, and they continued that throughout the 80 minutes. Their defensive line was getting up off the line and putting pressure on. Japan won’t be any different, they will go for 80 minutes.”