NEWS-FINANCE -QUOTE-EDUCATIONAL AND MOTIVATIONAL
Back in 2022, Braxton Sorensen-McGee was in the Eden Park crowd to watch the heart-stopping semi-final between France and New Zealand. The then 16-year-old, at the ground with her school team, remembers the moment of relief when a last-minute French penalty goal attempt drifted wide, allowing the Black Ferns to scrape through to the final of the Women’s World Cup. In another gripping contest against arch-rivals England, New Zealand went on to win the tournament.
Now, Sorensen-McGee hopes to play a decisive role in retaining the title. After a breakout 2025, the 18-year-old is the youngest member of the Black Ferns squad, who take on Spain on Monday morning (NZT) in their opening act of the 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup, hosted by England.
Instead of just watching, as she did that spring evening in 2022, the three-Test full-back hopes to help the Black Ferns secure a record seventh World Cup title – and their third in succession.
“Everyone believes that we got it, and we back each other. We just need to be present in the moment and just stay in it … I think we have the team,” she told the Guardian over the phone on her lunch break between training sessions before leaving New Zealand.
Sorensen-McGee is one of a number of prominent young players in the Black Ferns’ 33-woman squad from which that team will be selected. Others include the fleet-footed loose-forward Jorja Miller, 21, who has dominated the international sevens game since making her debut three years ago; powerful ball-running prop Veisinia Mahutariki-Fakalelu, 20; and Logo-I-Pulotu Lemapu-Atai’i Sylvia Brunt, the bruising centre who, despite being just 21, has already won 25 Test caps for the Black Ferns, including several appearances at the previous World Cup.
At the other end of the spectrum, older heads such as co-captain and first five-eighth Ruahei Demant, winger Portia Woodman-Wickliffe, and mainstays of the forward pack like hooker Georgia Ponsonby and co-captain Kennedy Tukuafu have their hands on the tiller. Another veteran, 30-year-old Theresa Setefano, the second five-eighth who scored a crucial late try in that French semi-final, described the importance of having youthful exuberance to draw on during long, gruelling campaigns like a World Cup.
“That’s probably where the young girls’ energy will help us older ones as well. They love to have fun. And I feel like, if you’re under 21, your energy levels are just out of the gate.”
Setefano says young and old in the squad will “be leaning on each other in different aspects”. Players like herself, she says, can help the less experienced “focus on the right things, try and shut out the noise, because there will be a lot of external noise, and it’s a long, long campaign as well”.
Sorensen-McGee says she is looking to her elders to help cope with the intensity of World Cup rugby.
“They know what pressure is like,” she says. “They know how to be in difficult moments and hard times … [We] look up to them, play off them, and seeing them do it gives us confidence.”
In her case, knowing that a back-three colleague of Woodman-Wickliffe’s experience and calibre “has got my back” is a huge boost; Sorensen-McGee hopes the combination they formed during this year’s Super Rugby Aupiki campaign for the Blues will help power the Black Ferns to the title.
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Both Sorensen-McGee and Setefano acknowledged the afterglow of the 2022 campaign, both from the perspective of a close-fought tournament eventually – and very emotionally – won by the home team in front of their adoring fans, and as a sporting spectacle that raised the profile of women’s game globally. Setefano remembers the tournament as something “like a movie or a fairytale, you could say, everything just fell into place for us”.
Sorensen-McGee spoke of the Black Ferns’ history as a legacy she was desperate to help uphold. But both players are trying not to let thoughts of that tournament cloud their thinking about this one.
Setefano: “It is a clean slate this time around. Nothing you did in the past will really matter coming into this World Cup here. So we will take it one game at a time. Just focus on ourselves.”
But nor is the squad unrealistic about the pressure they will face – and about how different – and how belligerent – that pressure could be when compared with the army of poi-wielding supporters who urged them on to overcome England during that epic final at a sold-out Eden Park three years ago. Both teams could meet again at the sharp end of this tournament, at a sold-out Twickenham for the final with a record 82,000 fans in the grandstands, almost all of them in the English corner, baying for revenge. Setefano says the “tighter and more connected” the team can be, the better they will deal with that pressure.
“We are aware that it will be a different sort of atmosphere in the UK, and so we are prepared for that. We know we’ll have each other’s backs, and we know that our whole country will be supporting us back at home.”
Sorensen-McGee, whose maturity Setefano speaks highly of, welcomes that pressure.
“I think pressure is a privilege. Like, it’s a privilege to have this job, to be able to put on the Black Ferns jersey, to be able to train every day. Yeah, it’s pretty much a privilege for me. I don’t look too much on it as pressure.
“Even though it’s my first World Cup, I back my ability to go out there and show the world what I’m like. And I think we have the team to do it.”
