'We knew what was coming': Wallaroos coach praises 'fighting' spirit

Outgoing Australian women’s coach Jay Tregonning has left the team in a very good space, as they finished the inaugural WXV 1 tournament with their second successive win. The 25-19 result over Wales came despite being down to 13 players at one stage, with Tregonning saying the team was “fighting for each other”.

“That’s exemplified when we’re you know down a few players and everyone’s doing someone else’s job for a certain amount of time,” he said post-match.

The Wallaroos lost Siokapesi Palu, who was shown a red card after a dangerous tackle, then Sera Naiqama was shown a yellow after a collapsed maul near the goal line resulted in a penalty try to Wales.

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“We knew what was coming,” Tregonning said of the Welsh effort, that scored three lineout drives tries and were lining up a fourth to win the game before being repulsed by some tenacious Australian defence.

“We know that they maul out of their end trying to get penalties and get field position and when they get that field position they go back to the maul.

“But our players have really come along within being able to read the game and obviously make adjustments where needed… it’s just the way that they all dig in together and lead.”

Wallaroos captain Michaela Leonard paid tribute to her opponents.

“It was definitely a little bit of an arm wrestle and credit to Wales,” she said.

“They played well and they came hard at us in defence and they read well what we were trying to put out there. I think we probably let ourselves down a little bit in execution around the breakdown in our shapes, it’s hard to play our pictures when we’re down a couple of critical players and having to change our shape.”

Player of the match Kaitlan Leaney, who put in a big shift at number eight, was proud of the “gold wall” of defence she’d been a part of.

“It’s something we’ve talked about for the last couple of months…no one gets through us. I feel like I’ll be replaying that last maul-D for the rest of my life.

Fellow loose forward Emily Chancellor said that Wales “stuck it to” the Wallaroos.

“They had great line speed, great ruck pressure and we didn’t really react the way we should have. We talked during the week about how do you react when someone punches you in the face? It’s not what you want, but I’m really happy how we managed to keep it together and weather the storm while they were on the front foot.

For Leonard, being the good news story that Australian rugby fans can enjoy right now was something she described as “incredible”.

“The influx of messages and support from back home, all over the world, people everywhere – they’re behind it. People want to see rugby in Australia do well. They want to support someone, they want to support women’s sport. So the support out there this week, it’s been eye opening and it’s been incredibly empowering to know that people are watching, people care and they’re excited and behind us.”