Team USA Just Shook Up the Women’s Rugby World Cup

If you don’t know much about rugby aside from TikTok star and ESPY winner Ilona Maher, you could be forgiven. But Maher and the USA Women’s Rugby Team (known as the Eagles) have had a rollercoaster of a Rugby World Cup ride—and it’s not even out of the group stages yet. Leave it to America to keep things dramatic.

The 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup kicked off in Sunderland, England, on August 22, with the USA taking on the host country and getting thoroughly walloped by England 69-7.

Most Popular

If those sound like football numbers, it’s because they kind of are—rugby has four main ways to score: tries, where a player takes the ball over the opponent’s in-goal area (worth five points); conversion kicks, which take place after successful tries and require you to make it through the goal posts (two points); penalties, which give teams a chance to kick at the goal after an infraction by the other team (three points); or a drop goal, which is when a player volleys the ball in-between the posts while in play (three points).

As you can see, England scoring 69 points to USA’s seven is an old-fashioned ass-kicking, and since the Rugby World Cup format consists of a group stage (four teams play each other in round robin games, with the top two making it to the knock-out round), Maher and the Eagles needed to win their next game.

Except that next game was against Australia, and the Wallaroos are no joke. I went into this past Saturday expecting to watch the USA women get trounced again. Head coach Sione Fukofuka called it a “must-win” game and made some major adjustments to the lineup to hopefully secure a dub.

Saturday’s game was perhaps the best rugby match of the year, with the USA and Australia going back-and-forth across the pitch in a brilliant display of the sport. Journalist Daniel Gallan covered the match for the Guardian, writing, “I’m not exaggerating when I say that was one of the best games of rugby I’ve ever watched.”

Australia led at halftime, and the momentum seemed to be in their favor, but someone riled up Team USA during the break, and they came out swinging, getting two successful tries in 12 minutes to start the second half. Though the USA only led the game for six minutes total, they fought valiantly, and Australia’s penchant for penalties helped snatch the win from their fingertips—though a late penalty against the USA left them feeling “bittersweet,” according to Fukofuka.

“We did everything to get back in the game and give ourselves an opportunity to close it out, but unfortunately, we gave a penalty away that allowed Australia a chance,” he said after the match.

The game ended in a 31-31 draw, with both teams and the crowd exhausted—USA’s Lotte Sharp, seeing the clock past 80 minutes, kicked the ball out of bounds as if to say, “We’ll take this.” Maher, who seemed frustrated, told ESPN: “I think we gave them a great game, and I think that’s just cool to see. A lot of people probably haven’t seen rugby, so they got to come out and see such an entertaining game like that, that’s what we want to do. We want to show them that it can be entertaining just as the men.”

But now, a different obstacle lies on the horizon: on Saturday, September 6, the USA plays Samoa in their final group stage game. It’s not just a must-win: the Eagles need to get a bonus point win, which means they have to win and score at least four tries to secure five points in total. And Australia has to lose to England and fail to get that bonus point for the teams to be tied at eight points. The deciding factor would be point differential. Australia will play England this Saturday, right after the USA takes on Samoa.

“The biggest message is we fought back,” USA captain Kate Zackary said after the game. “We’ve earned ourselves another shot.”

It’s going to be a wild weekend of rugby.

Like what you just read? You’ve got great taste. Subscribe to Jezebel, and for $5 a month or $50 a year, you’ll get access to a bunch of subscriber benefits, including getting to read the next article (and all the ones after that) ad-free. Plus, you’ll be supporting independent journalism—which, can you even imagine not supporting independent journalism in times like these? Yikes.