Australia begin their Women’s Rugby World Cup campaign with a clash against Samoa on 23 August and high hopes of at least matching their best result at the tournament when it was last held in England. The Wallaroos finished third at the global showpiece 15 years ago, but if the current No 6-ranked side are to survive their pool – let alone snatch a breakthrough World Cup crown – they must first face down the game’s biggest star, the US’s Ilona Maher, as well as their host, England.
These are the five players who can help lift the Wallaroos to new heights and lay down a marker before Australia host the World Cup in 2029.
Desiree Miller
At only 163cm, Sydney winger Miller is the Wallaroos’ pocket rocket at this World Cup. The former gymnastics prodigy boasts serious pedigree – her aunty Gail won gold in water polo at the 2000 Olympics and an uncle represented Australia as a boxer. Most vitally, the 23-year-old has got speed to burn and evasive skills to light up this tournament.
Miller only took up rugby in 2021 when Covid left her itching for more physicality from sport. The core fitness, leg strength and flexibility she had honed on the gymnastics mat made her an instant success and elite striking skills from her football days make her a handy goalkicker. With her arsenal of athletic gifts, Miller inspired the Waratahs to the 2024 Super Rugby title, scoring three tries in the grand final, then rising to the occasion with another four for the Wallaroos against Fiji in July.
That explosive power and courage in contact make Miller key to Australia’s left-edge attack. The 18-cap flyer has shelved a double degree in psychology and cognitive science to chase her rugby dreams. Yet having scored so often and never celebrated with a pike, sissone or backflip (although she has done the splits in a team photo), there’d be no better place for Miller to dip into her gymnast’s bag of tricks than after a match-winner at this World Cup.
Lori Cramer
The larrikin utility back from central Queensland finished the 2024 Test season as the Wallaroos’ highest scorer with 81 points. But Cramer arrives at this World Cup with a point to prove, having been displaced from her favoured full-back spot by rookie Caitlyn Halse. Playing the 2021 tournament in New Zealand means Cramer’s big-match experience and icy calm attitude under fire across her 30 Tests will be crucial in Australia’s quest for a semi-final berth.
At 32, Cramer’s value on the playing field is matched by her team-bonding qualities in the squad. A proud Indigenous woman from the Yiman people, the self-described “old chook” has deep life experience, having taught resilience skills as a youth worker in high schools. Then there is her work as a labourer. Cramer’s Instagram is full of videos of her wielding jackhammers and cement mixers on the job. Surely there is no truer “utility” in the game.
Cramer has of late put aside a passion for growing cactus to play for Exeter Chiefs in the UK, where she is a beloved favourite with fans and teammates on the team bus. That experience in English conditions – and her hybrid skills from touch football, football and rugby sevens – could be crucial in this World Cup tilt and in Cramer’s mooted future as a coach.
Ashley Marsters
If World Cup experience counts, these Wallaroos need look no further than Marsters. The 2025 tournament will be the 31-year-old flanker’s third after featuring in 2014 and 2021, and she goes into rugby’s big jamboree as the most-capped Wallaroo with 40 Tests. She’s done it with great tenacity and versatility, having played flanker, hooker, tighthead or loosehead prop (once all three in a single Test), even filling in as a centre at the 2014 World Cup.
Ever since she ran out for Boroondara juniors as a four-year-old, Marsters has been a ball player, as dextrous with her offloads as she is dynamic in her charges. Little wonder the Western Force poached the longtime Melbourne Rebel as their marquee signing in 2025. And if recent form is an indicator, Marsters has plenty of football left in her. A gatecrashing try against Wales earlier this month showed the hunger and cunning of the Victorian veteran, exactly the sort of ruthlessness the Wallaroos need to smash out of the World Cup pool stages.
Tia Hinds
After the Australian women’s sevens side won Olympic gold in Brazil in 2016, a generation of schoolgirls back home started to dream of wearing the gold. Many are now bursting through the ranks as sevens stars and Wallaroos, with gifted flyhalf Hinds leading the new wave of hybrid heroes by debuting at a World Cup.
The Maroubra Magic playmaker is a mix of the nation’s football codes, having excelled at Australian rules, rugby league and touch football before becoming the youngest member of the sevens squad at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. The then teenager kicked on even further in 2022, winning rugby’s coveted sevens triple crown – a gold medal at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games, plus titles at the World Cup and world series final.
After a second Olympics in Paris and some goal kicking glory in Madrid, Hinds – “Dolly” to her mates – joined injured sevens star Charlotte Caslick in switching from rugby sevens to the 15-a-side game and made her Test debut in May this year against Fiji. Loving Hinds’ spark, coach Jo Yapp went on to blood the young gun in Tests against Canada, New Zealand and Wales. A criminology student away from rugby, Hinds is the Wallaroos’ secret weapon at the World Cup.
Waiaria Ellis
The last 12 months has seen the three youngest debutants in Wallaroos history – Halse (17 years, 242 days), Ruby Anderson (18 years, six days) and Ellis (17 years, 305 days). Of that trio, Ellis is smallest – 160cm and 60kg – but may have the biggest future.
“Baba” has been playing against women twice her size since debuting for the Waratahs aged 16. The trick, Ellis will twinkle, is simply not to get tackled. The Blacktown Scorpion winger rarely is, putting on the jets with such flair during the last 18 months that she won a Test debut against the Black Ferns in July and then blasted her way into this World Cup squad.
Another Australian representative gymnast who tore up junior touch football and OzTag before rugby called, Ellis is a tiny dancer set for big things, if not at this tournament then at the 2029 World Cup in Australia. Don’t judge Ellis by her size, warns Yapp. “When you see what she lifts in the gym and how she fronts up physically in training, you know she doesn’t play small.”
