AUCKLAND, New Zealand -- The Wallaroos are ready to play with freedom and hopefully crash the Black Ferns' opening night party in front of a sold-out crowd on Saturday night with all the pressure building on New Zealand, according to Wallaroos coach Jay Tregonning and his players.
With the clock to the opening whistle ticking down and with more than 35,000 tickets sold for the opening night, excitement and nerves are building within the Wallaroos camp as they prepare to kick their World Cup off, but with the expected 'black out' at the stadium with so many New Zealand fans set to attend they believe it's their opposition who'll be feeling the expectations of their nation to perform at Eden Park.
"Yeah, absolutely [the pressure is on the Black Ferns]," Tregonning said. "From our point of view, the Wallaroos had never beaten the Black Ferns, and we've got this awesome opportunity for a group of Wallaroos to experience this venue at a large capacity, some have had previous experiences playing Black ferns there before, but nothing like the crowd that's going to be there, so we're really excited for the players to be able to use that energy but from our point of view, we don't feel like there's any pressure on us at all."
Backing up her coach's comments, Wallaroos scrumhalf Iliseva Batibasaga believes the pressure to perform at home will be massive for the Black Ferns, and thinks her team has the ability to shut down the crowd if they play their game plan.
"Yeah, 100 percent, I do," Batibasaga said. "It's the first World Cup in the Southern Hemisphere in New Zealand, which is pretty much the home of rugby, so there is a lot of pressure on them to perform especially at Eden Park being hallowed ground.
"But for me, grass is grass and a stadium's a stadium, so if we can just put our best foot forward then we'll challenge them until the end.
"If we just go through our processes, go through our structure and stick with each other, keep the comms up and play our phases and iron out the edges like we plan to do tomorrow in our game rehearsal then we should be fine [to block out the crowd]."
According to Black Ferns scrumhalf though, it's about the team embracing the pressure and the mass of fans who'll pack into the stadium.
"There's over 30,000 people," Cocksedge said. "We have never experienced that before. The girls are really excited. We never had this much media. The players but also the staff are getting noticed more on the street. It all lets us promote the game more.
"This week we have been focusing on doing what we need to do well in the game. We talked about pressure and the pressure of playing the World Cup on home turf and embracing it. We need to run out on Saturday and soak it all up.
"It's about embracing it all but staying in the moment at the same time. Don't get ahead of yourself, because you have a job to do and that's play good footy."
Preparing for the big test, Tregonning has named a strong line-up, has throwing Australian women's sevens Triple Crown winner Sharni Williams straight into the mix. Sliding into the inside centre position for her fourth World Cup appearance, the 34-year-old has had only a few weeks in camp, and the Wallaroos coach admits there were some teething issues, but believes she's got the ability and experience to help the backline produce excitement on Saturday night.
"Yeah, Sharni would be the first to admit that there's been a few little teething issues in regards to her timings and that with different personnel," Tregonning said. "But the quality of athlete and the professional that she is she's been working really hard to rectify those at training.
"It definitely wasn't an easy selection decision, but she's value added on the field and off the field as we knew she would and we feel that it's good for her to get this game under a belt for the rest of the campaign."
In another change to the side, lock Sera Naiqama has won selection for her first starting appearance over Michaela Leonard, with Tregonning hoping to find some success at set-piece, which has been a sticking point for the side throughout the year, alongside disciplinary issues.
"Tough decisions had to be made, obviously our set-piece and lineout and we've struggled with a little bit and we're just seeing if this little change can help us in that area for sure.
"We've worked hard on that [discipline as well]. At the referees briefing earlier in the week a lot of the things they were raising actually had a fair few of our clips that they were showing of things that we could have been better in.
"I've been running up and down the sideline during our drills, calling people offside and all that and you know we're trying to have that big focus with us within discipline and that's going to be key in regards to maintaining an equal amount of possession this week.
"We've obviously played them three times already this year and we we're really competitive in two, the one we weren't our discipline and our speed around the corner wasn't there. In Adelaide, where we became really competitive again, our speed around the corner and physicality was great, but our discipline was still letting us down, so it's the little things we need to do right to be even more competitive with these formidable opponents."