Category Sports News

Guinness Women’s Six Nations: England v Scotland

Venue: Mattioli Woods Welford Road Stadium, Leicester Date: Saturday, 19 April Kick-off: 16:45 BST

Captain Rachel Malcolm misses out with a concussion as Scotland make two changes for their Six Nations trip to England on Saturday.

Malcolm suffered a head knock in the 25-17 home defeat by Italy last weekend, as did scrum-half Leia Brebner-Holden.

Fly-half Helen Nelson will lead the team in Malcolm’s absence.

Caity Mattinson takes over at number nine and Jade Konkel comes in at number eight as Evie Gallagher moves to blindside flanker in place of Malcolm.

Rachel McLachlan joins those two in the back row and will earn her 50th cap, while lock Becky Boyd stays in the team after making her first start against the Italians.

There are a trio of uncapped players on the bench, with Gemma Bell among the forward options, while Rhea Clarke provides scrum-half cover and centre Rachel Philipps could also make a potential debut.

Scotland opened with victory over Wales but are now fifth in the table after defeats by France and Italy.

England, aiming for a seventh successive title, lead the way with three bonus-point wins.

England have won all 23 Six Nations meetings with Scotland, the past five encounters settled by an aggregate score of 266-22.

“England have the ability to go through you physically, they also have the ability to go round you,” said head coach Bryan Easson. “They can suffocate you defensively.

“They have such a good team, one to 15, or should I say one to 40. No matter what changes they make, they have world class players coming in.

“It’s a huge task but one we are certainly up for.

England: Kildunne; Dow, Jones, Shekells, MacDonald; Aitchison, L Packer; Clifford, Atkin-Davies, Bern, Galligan, Ward, Aldcroft (capt), M Packer, Feaunati.

Replacements: Campbell, Botterman, Muir, Talling, Matthews, Hunt, Rowland, Scarratt.

Scotland: Rollie; Lloyd, Orr, Thomson, McGhie; Nelson (capt), Mattison; Young, Skeldon, Clarke, Bonar, Boyd, Gallagher, McLachlan, Konkel.

Back row Erin King will miss the remainder of Ireland’s Women’s Six Nations campaign and the World Cup later this year because of a knee injury, the Irish Rugby Football Union has confirmed.

The 21-year-old sustained the injury during last week’s defeat by England in Cork and is to undergo surgery in Dublin on Thursday before beginning her rehabilitation.

King, who was named World Rugby Women’s XV’s Breakthrough Player of the Year last November, will miss the forthcoming matches away to Wales and Scotland, as well as the World Cup, which takes place in England in August and September.

“I’m heartbroken”, said Australia-born King.

“It feels very unfair right now but I’ve had the best few months with this team and I can’t wait to support in every way I can from the sidelines.

The news will come as a major blow to Ireland as they prepare to make their return to World Cup action in a few months after failing to qualify for the previous edition of the tournament.

The Ireland Sevens international made her debut in the XVs format in September’s win over Australia at Kingspan Stadium in Belfast and has subsequently cemented her place in head coach Scott Bemand’s squad.

Her performances in WXV1 in Canada in September, including scoring two tries in a memorable win over world champions New Zealand, helped her pick up the Breakthrough Player of the Year accolade.

King had played every minute of Ireland’s first three games in this year’s Six Nations before her setback.

She made her debut for Ireland sevens at the Dubai Sevens in December 2021 and played a significant part in the Irish women’s team becoming the first ever to win a World Series silver medal in February 2022 in Spain.

King was named in the squad for the 2022 Rugby World Cup Sevens – Women’s tournament held in Cape Town, South Africa, and represented Ireland at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

Rafael Nadal will be honoured in a ceremony at this year’s French Open, says tournament director Amelie Mauresmo.

The Spanish great, who retired in November, won 14 of his 22 Grand Slam titles at Roland Garros.

No other player has won as many singles titles at one Grand Slam event as Nadal at the French Open. The 38-year-old claimed his final Grand Slam title there in 2022.

Mauresmo said a ceremony would be held on Court Philippe Chatrier at the end of the day session on Sunday, 25 May.

“Rafa made history at Roland Garros and his 14 titles will perhaps remain unequalled,” two-time major champion Mauresmo said.

“The idea is to have a vision for the future and also to celebrate those who thrilled us in the past.”

Nadal lost to eventual runner-up Alexander Zverev in his final French Open appearance last year.

The tournament will also honour the retiring Richard Gasquet and 2000 champion Mary Pierce.

Prize money for the tournament has also increased by 5.21%, rising to 56.3 million euros (£48.35m).

The men’s semi-final will not begin before 19:00 local time, having started at 17:30 last year.

French Tennis Federation president Gilles Moretton said the tournament would not replace line judges with electronic line calling.

The French Open is the only one of the four majors that still has line judges, with Wimbledon bringing in electric line calling this year.

“I think we are right to keep our referees and linesmen at Roland Garros,” Moretton said.

Success is synonymous with Olympique Lyonnais Feminin.

Since being established in 2004, the French club have become one of the superpowers in women’s football, lifting 38 trophies across the domestic and European stage.

Their record in the Women’s Champions League is unparalleled, winning the competition eight times in an 11-year period between 2011 and 2022.

While Lyon remain a formidable force in the women’s game, with a record-extending 12th European final appearance on the horizon if they overcome Arsenal over the next fortnight, other teams are catching up in terms of both investment and on-field success.

In recent years they have been usurped on the European stage by fellow semi-finalists Barcelona, who are just three matches from a third Champions League title in a row.

For more than 30 years, local businessman Aulas was Lyon.

After becoming owner and president in 1987, following pleas from the city’s mayor and F1 legend Alain Prost, he oversaw the men’s club’s transformation from a debt-ridden club languishing in the second tier to serial trophy-winners throughout the 2000s.

Determined to replicate that success in women’s football, he launched OL Feminin in 2004 and, under his ownership, the club attracted top overseas players, championed French talent like Wendie Renard, and opened France’s first mixed-gender academy.

It took three years to deliver silverware, winning the Premiere Ligue in 2006-07. The rest is history.

“This guy was ahead of his time,” former Lyon defender Lucy Bronze told the BBC’s World Service. “To have someone that powerful say I want the women’s team to do well, I want them to be the best, I want to give them everything.

Aulas’ ownership ended in 2022 when Eagle Football became the majority shareholders of the OL Groupe, which encompassed both the men’s and women’s teams – as well as a majority stake in NWSL side Seattle Reign, and he resigned from his 36-year presidency the following year.

In 2023, the women’s team changed hands again, with South Korea-born American businesswoman Kang, who made her fortune in healthcare IT, taking on majority ownership and making it a separate entity – “independent” – from the men’s team.

“We have reached the end of our model a bit,” chief executive Vincent Ponsot said. “I think we needed a new lease of life, a new project. That is exactly what Michele brought with a much more global vision.

Described by the Financial Times as “arguably the first tycoon in women’s football”, Kang is a relative latecomer to football.

She first became interested in the sport after meeting the World Cup-winning US women’s team in 2019 and has since built up a portfolio of teams under her Kynisca Sports International group. In addition to Lyon, she has been the majority owner of NWSL team Washington Spirit since 2022 and purchased Women’s Championship side London City Lionesses in 2023.

“I realised these are the best of the best athletes around the world,” Kang said, reflecting on her meeting with the USWNT.

“I saw a significant lack of resources and attention. I saw the possibility of how women’s football could explode with a little nudge and a little investment.

“I am not alone and there are a lot of people who share the same passion. Two billion people watch the World Cup – it’s growing.”

Kang’s interest isn’t limited to multi-club ownership, however, with a number of multi-million pound investments in women’s sport, including a £39m global investment in improving the health of elite female athletes.

Her plans for Lyon are no less grand. Her long-term ambitions include the construction of a dedicated women’s centre, with a 15-18,000-seater stadium and a bigger training facility, while she has already invested heavily in improving the club’s backroom staff.

“The first thing she said to me was ‘Vincent, what do you have to do for the OL women’s team to have the same supervisions as the professional men’s team?’. That was in August 2023,” Ponsot said.

“I told her, ‘we have to hire 11 people to the staff’, and she said, ‘go on then’. Two months later, we had 11 more people and 24 staff to improve the support to players so they can perform.

“The main thing we have evolved is in the performance sector. We have full-time nutritionists, physiotherapists, doctors, a performance manager, a psychologist. We have everything we need for the players to be in the best conditions to perform like the men’s team.”

Lyon midfielder and USA captain Lindsey Heaps added: “[Michele] is incredible. I have never seen anything like this in the women’s game, the sort of investment but also the way she speaks.

Another of Kang’s priorities is increasing attendances at Lyon fixtures.

“If you ask many female players what is at the top of your wishlist, they don’t say I want to get paid more, I want bigger cars. They say, ‘I want to play against the best players and best teams in a sellout stadium’. It’s my job that we fill the stadium,” she said.

Lyon will travel to Emirates Stadium on Saturday (12:30 BST) for the first leg of their Champions League semi-final with Arsenal – a stadium where the Gunners recorded an average attendance of 52,029 across six matches last season.

“When you see that Arsenal are filling Emirates Stadium, there is no reason why we can’t,” said Ponsot. “We realised that women’s football has an audience with a strong increase in appetite, but we are having trouble making it a reality.”

Lyon are on course for a record-extending 18th league title this season, having already booked their place in May’s end-of-season play-offs. Indeed, they have only lost two league matches over the past four seasons.

That sustained success, coupled with Aulas’ unmatched support, is seen by some as having had a negative impact on crowds, media interest, and investment in France.

Women’s football journalist Assile Toufaily said: “Some will say ‘why should we come and watch football that isn’t attractive because the level isn’t that good?’ We know OL are going to smash the other clubs 7-0. Fans aren’t intrigued to come and watch.

“They say if you want to have a better level of football, investors have to invest. Investors will then say why should we invest if the media isn’t promoting the game? So you find yourself in a vicious circle and it’s been like this for years.”

But she does not see Aulas’ investment as the problem.

“If he didn’t invest in 2004, maybe no-one would ever have done it in France. Aulas isn’t to blame, but maybe the problem is others didn’t follow along.”

Kang, unsurprisingly, is undaunted by this, working with Ponsot to “find the profile” of women’s football fans, with their own research indicating only a 5% overlap between fans who watch men’s and women’s matches.

She will likely find a powerful ally in Aulas, who was elected vice-president of the French Football Federation in December 2023 and has taken over responsibility for development of women’s football.

“The French league is going to be very strong in years to come,” vowed Aulas.

Success is synonymous with Olympique Lyonnais Feminin.

Since being established in 2004, the French club have become one of the superpowers in women’s football, lifting 38 trophies across the domestic and European stage.

Their record in the Women’s Champions League is unparalleled, winning the competition eight times in an 11-year period between 2011 and 2022.

While Lyon remain a formidable force in the women’s game, with a record-extending 12th European final appearance on the horizon if they overcome Arsenal over the next fortnight, other teams are catching up in terms of both investment and on-field success.

In recent years they have been usurped on the European stage by fellow semi-finalists Barcelona, who are just three matches from a third Champions League title in a row.

For more than 30 years, local businessman Aulas was Lyon.

After becoming owner and president in 1987, following pleas from the city’s mayor and F1 legend Alain Prost, he oversaw the men’s club’s transformation from a debt-ridden club languishing in the second tier to serial trophy-winners throughout the 2000s.

Determined to replicate that success in women’s football, he launched OL Feminin in 2004 and, under his ownership, the club attracted top overseas players, championed French talent like Wendie Renard, and opened France’s first mixed-gender academy.

It took three years to deliver silverware, winning the Premiere Ligue in 2006-07. The rest is history.

“This guy was ahead of his time,” former Lyon defender Lucy Bronze told the BBC’s World Service. “To have someone that powerful say I want the women’s team to do well, I want them to be the best, I want to give them everything.

Aulas’ ownership ended in 2022 when Eagle Football became the majority shareholders of the OL Groupe, which encompassed both the men’s and women’s teams – as well as a majority stake in NWSL side Seattle Reign, and he resigned from his 36-year presidency the following year.

In 2023, the women’s team changed hands again, with South Korea-born American businesswoman Kang, who made her fortune in healthcare IT, taking on majority ownership and making it a separate entity – “independent” – from the men’s team.

“We have reached the end of our model a bit,” chief executive Vincent Ponsot said. “I think we needed a new lease of life, a new project. That is exactly what Michele brought with a much more global vision.

Described by the Financial Times as “arguably the first tycoon in women’s football”, Kang is a relative latecomer to football.

She first became interested in the sport after meeting the World Cup-winning US women’s team in 2019 and has since built up a portfolio of teams under her Kynisca Sports International group. In addition to Lyon, she has been the majority owner of NWSL team Washington Spirit since 2022 and purchased Women’s Championship side London City Lionesses in 2023.

“I realised these are the best of the best athletes around the world,” Kang said, reflecting on her meeting with the USWNT.

“I saw a significant lack of resources and attention. I saw the possibility of how women’s football could explode with a little nudge and a little investment.

“I am not alone and there are a lot of people who share the same passion. Two billion people watch the World Cup – it’s growing.”

Kang’s interest isn’t limited to multi-club ownership, however, with a number of multi-million pound investments in women’s sport, including a £39m global investment in improving the health of elite female athletes.

Her plans for Lyon are no less grand. Her long-term ambitions include the construction of a dedicated women’s centre, with a 15-18,000-seater stadium and a bigger training facility, while she has already invested heavily in improving the club’s backroom staff.

“The first thing she said to me was ‘Vincent, what do you have to do for the OL women’s team to have the same supervisions as the professional men’s team?’. That was in August 2023,” Ponsot said.

“I told her, ‘we have to hire 11 people to the staff’, and she said, ‘go on then’. Two months later, we had 11 more people and 24 staff to improve the support to players so they can perform.

“The main thing we have evolved is in the performance sector. We have full-time nutritionists, physiotherapists, doctors, a performance manager, a psychologist. We have everything we need for the players to be in the best conditions to perform like the men’s team.”

Lyon midfielder and USA captain Lindsey Heaps added: “[Michele] is incredible. I have never seen anything like this in the women’s game, the sort of investment but also the way she speaks.

Another of Kang’s priorities is increasing attendances at Lyon fixtures.

“If you ask many female players what is at the top of your wishlist, they don’t say I want to get paid more, I want bigger cars. They say, ‘I want to play against the best players and best teams in a sellout stadium’. It’s my job that we fill the stadium,” she said.

Lyon will travel to Emirates Stadium on Saturday (12:30 BST) for the first leg of their Champions League semi-final with Arsenal – a stadium where the Gunners recorded an average attendance of 52,029 across six matches last season.

“When you see that Arsenal are filling Emirates Stadium, there is no reason why we can’t,” said Ponsot. “We realised that women’s football has an audience with a strong increase in appetite, but we are having trouble making it a reality.”

Lyon are on course for a record-extending 18th league title this season, having already booked their place in May’s end-of-season play-offs. Indeed, they have only lost two league matches over the past four seasons.

That sustained success, coupled with Aulas’ unmatched support, is seen by some as having had a negative impact on crowds, media interest, and investment in France.

Women’s football journalist Assile Toufaily said: “Some will say ‘why should we come and watch football that isn’t attractive because the level isn’t that good?’ We know OL are going to smash the other clubs 7-0. Fans aren’t intrigued to come and watch.

“They say if you want to have a better level of football, investors have to invest. Investors will then say why should we invest if the media isn’t promoting the game? So you find yourself in a vicious circle and it’s been like this for years.”

But she does not see Aulas’ investment as the problem.

“If he didn’t invest in 2004, maybe no-one would ever have done it in France. Aulas isn’t to blame, but maybe the problem is others didn’t follow along.”

Kang, unsurprisingly, is undaunted by this, working with Ponsot to “find the profile” of women’s football fans, with their own research indicating only a 5% overlap between fans who watch men’s and women’s matches.

She will likely find a powerful ally in Aulas, who was elected vice-president of the French Football Federation in December 2023 and has taken over responsibility for development of women’s football.

“The French league is going to be very strong in years to come,” vowed Aulas.

Speak to an injured sportsperson and they will often tell you there are positives to their enforced absence – a chance to reset, to get in the gym and spend time with family.

For some, the benefits are more significant than others.

“Spending time at home, you can get into really good routines in the way you eat,” Australia all-rounder Cameron Green tells BBC Sport.

“When you are on the road, it can be really hard to get kidney-friendly meals.”

Towering above you at 6ft 6in with the broadest of broad frames, Green looks every inch a cricketer. Failing that, an Olympic champion from the coxless four.

Such kidneys do not get better. There is no cure.

“A lot of people have a lot of different problems you don’t know about,” Green says.

“I find it really doesn’t impact my life that much. I just make good decisions, basically.

“The kidneys don’t heal themselves but there are certain ways to reduce how they do go. As long as I stay on top of it, I should be fine.”

Keeping on top of such issues is not easy when cricket’s calendar has you on the road for 10 months of the year, switching between hotel rooms in Melbourne, Manchester, Brisbane and Bangalore.

“I actually got helped out beautifully when I was in Bangalore [at the Indian Premier League], especially,” said Green.

“I had a better idea about how I wanted to go about it and I got in contact with the head chef there and had a direct line.

“I basically called him up and had a spreadsheet of four meals. I think it was a spaghetti bolognese, regular chicken and rice, a poke bowl and maybe one more.”

Green has not had such issues for the past seven months.

A back injury in September led to surgery in October and an Australian summer at home in Perth.

He was able to return to the gym in November, began running again in January and was in the nets in February, albeit having been told not to play certain shots because of the strain it would put on his back.

Green is now ready for his return and he will do so across five matches for Gloucestershire in the County Championship, starting on Friday against Kent.

When his signing was announced last month, it was revealed a mystery benefactor among the club’s membership had helped fund the move.

“I found out when it was in the paper,” says Green, who helpfully has an apartment in Bristol with a kitchen for the next six weeks.

“George Bailey [Australia’s chief selector and former batter] sent me a text joking about how much they must be paying me if they needed a mystery person.

Whoever stumped up the cash, Green’s arrival is mutually beneficial.

Gloucestershire get a player Australia hope will be a fixture in their XI for a generation.

Green gets competitive cricket in England and a chance to prove his form and fitness before the World Test Championship final against South Africa at Lord’s in June.

He will not bowl during his county stint, instead playing solely as a batter as Australia carefully manage his return given the year to come.

“It is probably working backwards from the Ashes,” he says.

“That is the plan. There is not a whole lot of cricket between July and the Ashes so they just thought ‘give you an extra couple of months rest’.

“There is no real rush to get back.”

Green admits his first taste of playing in England was a “learning experience”. He scored 103 runs and took five wickets in the drawn 2023 Ashes and by the end of the series had lost his place to Mitchell Marsh.

There is a reason Green excites the Australian hierarchy in a way few others ever have, however.

At his best he is a genuine fast-bowling all-rounder, something Australia has long craved.

You have to go back to Keith Miller or Richie Benaud, whose careers followed World War Two, for the last truly great Aussie all-rounder.

In that time, England have produced three icons in Ian Botham, Andrew Flintoff and Ben Stokes.

“The Australian public have a really high expectation on their cricketers and see their all-rounders as having to perform in both,” Green says.

“You look at someone like Shane Watson. He had an incredible career but is not put in the same category as others.

“The public expects you to average 40 with the bat and 30 with the ball to be considered elite, even though that is elite and almost unattainable.”

At present, Green’s statistics stand outside of that – an average of 36.23 with the bat and 35.31 as a bowler – although they are not dissimilar to Stokes’.

In his last Test series before the injury he scored 174 not out against New Zealand, batting at number four with Steve Smith pushed up to open to accommodate him.

The Smith-opener experiment has since been shelved and a log-jam created in the middle order after impressive debuts by Josh Inglis and Beau Webster, who will fight for spots alongside Smith, Travis Head and Marsh.

It leaves Green with work to do to get back into the XI for the Test final and then the Ashes, which begins in his home city on 21 November.

“I am just here trying to perform as well as I can every game,” Green says. “I am grateful for every chance I get at an Ashes or any Test, to be honest.

“Maybe that is a difference between Australia and here.

“Two years before they were going to play in Australia, they were already talking about it.

“I feel like that is a little bit draining. You have got to stay pretty present.”