Nerherlands and Spain meet in a women’s Rugby Europe Championship match on Saturday that will have a big impact on who the eventual winner of the competition is.
The clash takes place at the National Rugby Center in Amsterdam at 1pm local time (11am UTC) and pits the current leaders of the four-team event, Netherlands, against second placed Spain.
There are various mathematical permutations, but if the home team can win and build on two wins from two then they would be crowned champions.
However, if Spain win then they would know that a positive result for them in their final match against Sweden on April 13 would see them finish top.
They are not thinking about Sweden yet though, all the Spanish team are focusing on is Netherlands and they’ll know how dangerous the hosts can be on their day.
This is 15 versus 13 in the world and last year when they met when this was a three-team tournament Spain won 70-0, but expect this one to be much closer.
Netherlands defeated Sweden 59-0 with a bonus point to get their Championship campaign up and running back in early February at home.
They then backed that up with another bonus point win later that month, this time 31-7 on the road in Portugal.
At that time Linde Van Der Velden, the Netherlands skipper, said: “I think we were able to adapt well. In the first half we were under a lot of pressure, we weren’t sure what Portugal were going to bring, but in the second half we adapted much better to the conditions and the opponents.”
In their first outing in the Championship for this season last week, Spain were at home to Portugal and hooker Cristina Blanco’s unconverted try gave them the lead.
They were 19-0 up by half-time thanks to further tries by full-back Claudia Pena and loosehead prop María Del Castillo which were both converted.
Scrum-half Lucia Diaz added a fourth try after the break as they won 24-0 with a bonus point.
On the same day, Sweden and Ukraine meet in Trelleborg at 2pm local time (12pm UTC) as the Trophy continues towards its final rounds.
Elsewhere this weekend, Austria and Bosnia & Herzegovina meet in the men’s Conference on Saturday at 2pm local time (12pm UTC) in Vienna.
Also on Saturday, Hungary and Luxembourg meet in Budapest at 3pm local time (1pm UTC) and, on Sunday, in a men’s under-18 qualifier Germany host Poland at Rugby-Klub Heusenstamm at 3pm local time (1pm UTC) which will not be streamed.
All the other games will be live-streamed on rugbyeurope.TV
