Gabrielle Senft's World Cup Diary

It's great to be in England after a few weeks away playing rugby in some new places, including South Africa. It was my first time there so it was a lot of fun but it was also a bit of a shock because I didn’t know much about the culture and day to day life in South Africa, so that was an experience. I enjoyed playing there, but also because it was the highest altitude I’ve played in in my life, I was a bit shellshocked!

We watched South Africa's men play against Italy while we were there which was really cool. Seeing the occasion was really reminiscent to how our football or our hockey games are in Canada, with a half-time or pre-match show. The women's team is not as well followed just yet, but hopefully that will come with time.

That's something we're trying our best to improve in Canada as well. After the girls came back from last year's Paris Olympic Games with a silver medal it felt like there was a big shift in terms of what was being televised and how more people now know what rugby is. And not only do they now know what it is, they’re eager to learn more about it as well.

Women’s sport is taking off in Canada as much as it is globally. It would be nice if Canada and USA are able to collaborate at this Rugby World Cup in putting rugby on the map in North America. It could be huge after this World Cup because a lot of people would be into it if they knew what it was.

In terms of our build-up to the tournament, this is the most preparation we’ve had. This is my second World Cup and last time we played one warm-up game but this time we’ve had six or seven, so already we have so much more experience under our belt. We’ve prepared 32 players for this tournament, not just 23, and having more time together on and off the field and travelling together always contributes to the whole experience of a World Cup.

A lot of people back home have been really supportive with plenty of comments and posts on social media. We are grateful for the support but we don't allow it to put any additional pressure on ourselves. Our chat within our team is very much that we take one week at a time; we want to make sure we grow each week and we do the right things well, we are consistent and we have a good stability mindset within.

Making it to the final is our overall goal, but we know it's about doing the little things right on a daily basis. We're taking it one day at a time for sure, but still looking at it all as a whole. Everything we do is for the reason of hitting that final. We play this week against Fiji for the week after, and we play that week for the week that follows. We build everything so that by the time we get to the final we have more tools in our box. We have a reason behind everything and we have that expectation that we are going to hit that.

Those are the goals you have to have within the team to even get to a final in my opinion. I’ve got to a couple in club scenarios, and while getting there in a rugby World Cup is different, any experience helps and we have a lot of that in this team.

We know there are a lot of good teams at this tournament and we're excited for the challenge of playing them, but England is definitely the one we want to come across the most. We know that England has such a long history so we’re trying to build ourselves behind the scenes - our rugby knowledge, our game management, everything like that. We have prepared so hard for this because we want to beat them. We didn't do all this hard work to finish number two, we want to beat the number one team in the world to win the World Cup.

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