WONDER WOODMAN
She’s standing in the way of World Cup glory, so England must bring down...
IF England are to defend their World Cup crown on Saturday, they will need to stop Wonder Woodman. There is a superhero on the New Zealand wing. Portia Woodman has taken the women’s World Cup by storm — she may be only 5ft 7in and 11st but she’s the biggest threat to England’s global dominance.
The nickname just adds to her aura. Back home she features in ‘Small Blacks’ videos produced for children by New Zealand Rugby. There she is transformed into Wonder Woodman complete with cape and mask (top, right).
The 26-year-old from Auckland may well be superhuman, for all the evidence here.
She has scored an incredible 13 tries in only four matches — including eight against Hong Kong in the pool stage and four in the semi-final against the USA — as the Kiwis have swept aside all- comers. And this is only her fourth year in the sport.
In 2012, Woodman was a netball player for the Northern Mystics when she decided to attend a Go4Gold training day in New Zealand along with 1,100 hopefuls. The idea was to find women capable of playing for the Black Ferns sevens team at the Olympics.
Woodman stunned at the trials and a record 142 international sevens tries later, she helped win silver in Rio de Janeiro.
All Black legend Zinzan Brooke, who played with Jonah Lomu, says she is the female equivalent of the greatest winger the game has ever seen.
‘She is a try- scoring machine who has just scored four tries in a World Cup semi-final. The only other guy who did that who I know is Jonah against England in 1995,’ he told Sportsmail.
‘It is her footwork that is so good. She is a quality player. Netball has fine-tuned her skills so she is able to move the ball from hand to hand while running to evade defenders. She’s a great role model for girls, boys and adults.’
Winger Woodman is refreshingly outspoken, too. After the USA win she criticised World Rugby for a schedule that means teams must play the final only four days after the semis.
‘I’d like to see the men do a tournament like this,’ she said. ‘They probably wouldn’t handle this as well as we do.’
Woodman, then, is a force for good in the women’s game as well as being a star on the pitch. England must come up with a plan to stop her, and Kay Wilson is the winger charged with the unenivable marking task.
Black Ferns captain Fiao’o Fa’amausili gave this ominous warning: ‘Portia is awesome. I can’t keep count of her tries. We want tt to makek sure we d doublebl th the tally for her.’
England will have to embrace the role of baddies if they are to stop rugby’s newest superhero and retain the World Cup.