Two enormous yellow shipbuilding cranes dominate the Belfast skyline and are impossible to miss. Situated in the Titanic quarter and looming large over the city, they are known locally as Samson and Goliath, and considering England versus New Zealand is the final the Women’s World Cup has been craving, pitting by a distance the two giants of the game against each other, it is an apt backdrop for Saturday night’s showdown.
It is also a match-up that has a familiar ring to it – while the men’s game must make do with verbal sparring from Eddie Jones and Steve Hansen until next autumn, the Red Roses and the Black Ferns are no strangers to each other. England won in Rotorua in June, New Zealand at The Stoop in November and they have contested three previous World Cup finals. New Zealand have won all three but the most recent came in 2010 and because the standard of women’s rugby has improved immeasurably since then, only so much can be read into that.
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