USA coach explains changes including three-time Olympian’s surprise omission

Coach Sione Fukofuka has explained the mass changes made to the USA’s matchday 23 ahead of their second match at the 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup, including the surprise omission of three-time Olympian Alev Kelter from the side.

Following last week’s 69-7 loss to tournament hosts England in Sunderland, Fukofuka has made nine changes to the team ahead of a must-win clash with Australia. Emily Henrich has been brought into the midfield, set to partner Ilona Maher in the centres.

With Henrich moving from the wing to inside centre, Cheta Emba and Erica Coulibaly have been named to start on the edges. Those two will line up opposite the Wallaroos duo of Maya Stewart and Desiree Miller, with Miller scoring a hat-trick last weekend against Samoa in Salford.

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Cassidy Bargell comes into the run-on side at scrum-half, which is another notable change to the backline. As for the forwards, captain Kate Zackary moves from openside flanker to blindside, which has seen Freda Tafuna named in the backrow.

But the biggest talking point from the team announcement, as seen in RugbyPass’ article earlier on Thursday, was the omission of Kelter. This is Kelter’s third Rugby World Cup, but the sevens and 15s veteran drops out of the 23 altogether ahead of a crucial Test.

“There were always going to be some changes. Hallie [Taufoou] was out through injury last week, we’ve unfortunately had a couple of players ruled out through injury this week,” Fukofuka told reporters on Thursday.

“We wanted to find a little bit of a balance. Last week gave us some more information that we wanted to take into this week.

“Obviously it’s a must-win game so we’ve got to try and make some clear decisions around our opposition so there was a bit of a plan in place and then obviously some injuries.

“We’ve got a really strong set of depth,” he added. “We’ve got a lot of impact there. ‘Lev’ is a massive part of our team and still will be. We felt though, for this week in particular, the players that we’ve selected will allow our team to play as best as they can.

“Lev will obviously push back into that selection frame for Samoa.”

While the USA showed genuine signs of promise in their opening World Cup match, England were a class above, running in 11 tries. Ellie Kildunne, Jess Breach and Lark Atkin-Davies all scored doubles during the dominant 62-point win.

Erica Jarrell-Searcy scored the USA’s sole try of the contest in the 24^th minute, which was a moment to remember, with the lock running a fair distance to score. The Women’s Eagles were made just shy of 150 tackles in total, defending at 81 per cent.

If the USA lose to Australia and England beat Samoa, the Americans will bow out before the quarter-finals. But if the Eagles can beat the Wallaroos, then they’ll be in the box seat to make the knockout rounds, as they’ll go into next week’s match against Samoa as favourites.

“We came into the World Cup with a pretty clear plan, we needed to win two out of three. We knew regardless of the result against England, we would have to play well in this game,” Fukofuka explained.

“The mindset, to be honest, has been pretty high, up-tempo. The girls have been excited because we do have an opportunity to perform this week and we know that it’s in our hands.

“If we perform well, get the result, we’ll earn ourselves the opportunity to play beyond the pool stages.”