We are so excited to finally have people in the audience rooting for us. It’s not something we’ve had regularly Canada team.
Three weeks ago in France, the crowd was so loud. French fans are quite passionate. We want to feel that extra centimeter that can give us support in the house. That could give us an extra boost and help build momentum on our side.
I hope the nearly 20,000 fans at BMO Field can give it to us and finally put it on England in an unpleasant situation. They’ve had things relatively easy in terms of travel over the years.
To be really honest, that support at home isn’t something that Kévin (Rouet, Canada’s head coach) or any of us in camp have really talked about. We mainly focused on bringing young players into the group.
A lot of what we’ve done has been about settling into a rhythm, building on the performances we’ve started to produce but adding a bit more consistency in key areas such as set-pieces, fluidity in the backs and defence.
It is interesting to watch our games in September. We won one, drew one and lost one. In that order.
We gave everything for a draw against England. Then against France, maybe we underestimated them, focused too much on them and kind of forgot who we are.
The lack of connectivity and adaptability was probably also due to a bit of fatigue. We started the week in Cognac and then moved to La Rochelle. It was a wake-up call that we can use over the next two weeks.
You don’t always want wake-up calls, but sometimes you need them. This is what happened and we will learn from it. We have such a good group, with a lot of young players who have come in and are up to the challenge. We do not renew; we maintain the same standards. That really impressed me this year.
We have the Toronto audience in mind for this Friday. We’ve never been in an environment where all that noise was in our own stadium. I think we’re going to have to start yelling — and again — at each other in practice to get used to it.
I was told the other day that England made the last trip to Canada, out WXV 1 2024, it was 2015. For them, it is very different. I played on tour once when we played in New Zealand, Australia and the USA. England never had that.
Honestly, I don’t think it will have much of an impact on them. They have experienced players in the team. Once you get on the field, you can get into the zone very quickly. Your environment does not directly affect your performance.
Maybe it can affect scheduling and communication on the field – it does for us at Exeter – but overall, just adapt. Their performances are so well drilled that I don’t know if audience noise can affect their structure at all.
Perhaps we rely more on connection, small talk, and reading the images in front of us before adjusting. So maybe it could affect us.
Let’s go back to that Exeter game. It somehow feels inevitable. I wasn’t on the field when we kicked the ball. Maybe I was more distant from the situation. It was a tactical decision. Maybe in one of the next two games — both of which are against England — we can use that opportunity.
We achieved what we wanted, in a sense, by taking them all the way to the 80th minute and still having the ball on our 22-metre line. There was a lot of context to consider. Was it worth the risk at that point?
It is also interesting that on the eve of that match, everyone was talking only about the women’s game Rugby World Cup finally a year earlier. That game was not characteristic of us or the team we are. It wasn’t our day in the finals — that was it.
We went to Exeter with confidence. The confidence we earned with our performances earlier this year and the collective strength we have. This year we have much more depth in the lineup, and our performances showed that.
England may rely on individual players. For us, we have value in the whole team, and that collective strength is worth more.
I was also surprised, playing England again, how different I felt about them as a team. I had the same feeling after I started playing in France. Suddenly I knew the players. I knew what they did or didn’t like and how they might react under pressure.
I’ve only played in PWR (JAECOO Premiership Women’s Rugby) for a year, but I have that feeling now after playing with and against so many of these English players.
At the club level, the pressure is less. You see those players in front of you and you think, “I know you.” Before, I only knew them from watching videos. Learn things about players, like how they react under pressure. I like to use my presence and pressure to get inside people’s heads a little bit. It helps mentally.
From my last column, in front PWR finally, it was announced that I would be joining Trailfinders Next season’s women. I’m excited about it; there are so many Canadians there.
In front Scotland At a game in September, Kev invited Barney (Maddison, Trailfinders Women’s head coach) to the camp to give him a little insight into how we work and our overall vision.
I got to see another side of him, and it was really positive. I’m really happy with my choice and the opportunity to play with that group and all its characters. That will be one of the most intriguing things. There are certainly some characters there.