Women's Rugby World Cup: Wales v Scotland

Bit of a diary catch up here. Before last weekend, on Thursday 21st August, I spotted an advert for Women's Rugby World Cup 2025 matches in Manchester. I looked this up at home and learned that there were two matches that Saturday 23rd at the Salford Community Stadium near the Trafford Centre - Australia vs Samoa, and Wales vs Scotland. I knew that cosmolinguist, angelofthenorth and P would all be interested, so after work on Friday I tried to make the logistics work. I finally got everyone to agree a plan... and found out that the tickets were no longer on sale! I swore a lot and went to bed, grumpy.

On Saturday morning, the tickets were back on sale. It was too late to make the first match so we watched it on iPlayer instead. It was a drubbing for Samoa and probably wouldn't have been much fun anyway. Once it was over, I drove our gang over to the stadium. There were a couple of logistical snags but nothing that stopped us getting to our seats. I've not watched a sporting match in a stadium before, and it was good fun to be part of the crowd and watch the game up close. For £25 each we got decent seats near the centre line, which was very reasonable for international sport. We were yelling support for Wales, and behind us were a group of Scottish fans, but we never felt threatened or intimidated. Sadly Scotland rather handily beat Wales at the actual rugby, but it was an exciting match all the way and it was good to lean into the energy.

Not something I'd do all the time, but definitely a good experience.