Black Ferns captain Les Elder and fellow Bay of Plenty teammates, from left, Renee Wickliffe, Luka Connor, Karli Faneva, and Kelly Brazier. Photo / Getty Images
Black Ferns captain Les Elder and fellow Bay of Plenty teammates, from left, Renee Wickliffe, Luka Connor, Karli Faneva, and Kelly Brazier. Photo / Getty Images
England may have won the Cricket World Cup but they were no match for New Zealand's Black Ferns in the Women's Rugby Super Series.
The national women's rugby team, lead by Tauranga's Les Elder and boosted by Bay team members Kelly Brazier, Luka Connor, Karli Faneva and Renee Wickliffe, beatEngland 28-13 in San Diego on Monday morning (NZT) to win the series.
Three of those tries came from hat trick-producing Wickliffe, who said it was the team that helped her over the line during Monday morning's match.
"Throughout the whole 80 everybody was just on, that was some good footy out there that we displayed," Wickliffe said.
She said England was a top team and the team expected a tough match.
"They brought it to us and we knew that it was going to be a hard physical game but we were up for it."
The series began for the Black Ferns on June 29 and involved four-day turnarounds for their first three matches against Canada, USA on July 7, and France on July 7, before a rest before England on Monday.
Elder said England was a quality team and the Kiwis knew what they had to do to get the win.
"Leading into today we'd been, you know, written off a little bit that we've heard and there were comments about us being out-passioned, which you know, had some credit to it so we had a bit of a point to prove," Elder said.
"For us it was about meeting them physically and stopping some of their key kickers and I thought we did that really well, I thought our forward pack led really well put real pressure on their attack and we got some crucial turnovers which was awesome."
Head coach Glenn Moore said winning the series and retaining the number one ranking felt good.
"We really drilled town into our prep this week and you know, the focus has been good for the entire week and they got the reward. It still wasn't probably as climical as we'd like it to be but you know we had to win tough."
Next up for the Black Ferns is a series against Australia in August.
Black Ferns Super Series results: Black Ferns 35-20 Canada. Black Ferns 33-0 USA. Black Ferns 16-25 France. Black Ferns 28-13 England.
Upcoming matches: Black Ferns vs Australia Laurie O'Reilly Memorial Trophy Optus Stadium, Perth Saturday, August 10 Black Ferns vs Australia Eden Park, Auckland Saturday, August 17
