How two big gambles finally paid out in Red Roses World Cup glory

World champions, six straight Grand Slams, WXV winners and a record-breaking streak of 33 successive Test wins - England's dominance is now the defining feature of the women's rugby landscape.

But it hasn't always been so good for the Red Roses. Not by a long way.

If you wind back seven years to 2018, England had won only one of the preceding half-dozen Six Nations. They had lost six out of their last seven meetings with New Zealand, including the 2017 Rugby World Cup final.

Wales, Ireland, France and Canada had also inflicted defeats in recent years.

They were a major force, but far from being the major force.

Behind the scenes though, two decisions were being taken that supercharged England's progress to the top of the game, culminating in Saturday's World Cup final win over Canada.

In October 2016, the Rugby Football Union announced the establishment of a new domestic women's league.

The Premier 15s, as it was originally known, was backed by £2.4m of funding, contingent on the clubs meeting standards around professional coaching, sports science and medical support for players.

And in September 2018, full-time XV-a-side central contracts were announced for England players. Jess Breach, Natasha Hunt and Emily Scarratt were the first of 28 players to be become fully professional Red Roses.

Previously England squads would be offered short-term contracts around major tournaments and match fees, but would have to balance their rugby with jobs elsewhere and frequently flip into the sevens programme.

Deborah Griffin, an organiser of the first Women's Rugby World Cup in 1991 and now RFU president, was on the RFU's board at the time.

"I think the league has dramatically improved the performance of the Red Roses," she said

"The whole vision was to make sure the step up to the Red Roses wasn't such a big one, because there was a difference in standards between what the girls were experiencing at England level and then what they were experiencing in the clubs.

"Our biggest strength in this whole tournament is our strength in depth. You don't worry about who's coming off the bench, because they're often as good as the people on the field.

"And that's because we've had this league for eight years now. It's been really important."

Player pressure to switch to full-time XVs contracts had increased as well, with the likes of Australia, New Zealand and France having already moved to year-round deals.

"That was more done for the player welfare part, than necessarily the performance side," says Griffin.

"Of course, we wanted to perform better. It is one of the RFU's things is to have winning England sides.

"But there was a time when girls were coming back from France having played on the Sunday and returning on a ferry on a Monday morning to go back to work.

"That's not good for recovery or good for their mental health quite honestly."

In 2019, the first year of Red Roses contracts and the second year of the Premier 15s, England won the Six Nations title. And then pretty much everything since.

In 73 matches since the start of 2019, they have suffered defeat only twice.

The Premier 15s has turned into the PWR and is the highest standard of domestic rugby anywhere in the world, attracting global stars to come and play their rugby in England.

Those decisions were costly. They still are.

PWR teams, like their men's cousins, do not make money. Their losses can stretch into the high hundreds of thousands.

Despite filling Allianz Stadium for Saturday's Women's World Cup final win over Canada, the Red Roses are also a loss-making programme for the RFU.

Last year, chief executive Bill Sweeney estimated they wouldn't turn a profit until 2030., external

To have the Red Roses commit their whole selves to rugby, involves committing a lot of cash.

It was the main argument against setting up a new domestic women's league and, particularly, a full-time England XVs programme.

"The major issue was financial and it took a while to get over the line," admits Griffin.

However, there may well have been a cost in choosing not to support the women's game as well.

"One of the biggest reasons it did get over the line was because of the sponsors, specifically O2," explains Griffin.

"They and a couple of others made it very clear that they wanted some of their sponsorship to be supporting the women's game.

"If you don't do that, you're potentially putting sponsorship at risk.

"They didn't say that, but that's the understanding."

Since then, the Red Roses' success has pulled in new team-specific sponsors, with manufacturers of beauty products, consumer electronics and clothing brands all getting behind the women's team.

Their bets, and those of the RFU in the last decade, will pay out once more on Sunday afternoon as a bleary eyed set of players gather at a free event at Battersea Power Station to celebrate a victory years in the planning.