Rugby: Black Ferns ready for journey into unknown as World Cup awaits

Black Ferns player celebrate winning their test against Japan. Photo / Photosport

Ruahei Demant has found it hard to visualise what lies ahead.

After the Black Ferns' 95-12 demolition of Japan at Eden Park on Saturday night, their next appearance will be the World Cup opener against Australia at the same ground.

Since director of rugby Wayne Smith took over at the helm in an official capacity in April, the Black Ferns have had only a few months to change the way they play, with Smith's vision of a high-tempo game seeing plenty of players given a shot before a fairly inexperienced squad was selected for the World Cup.

Throughout the preparations, captain Demant has faced questions about expectations for the tournament and from the team. However, after Saturday's test, she said some of those questions were a bit tough to answer.

"We talk about visualising; I've found it quite hard to visualise the World Cup because I've never been to one so I don't know what to expect other than it's just another game," Demant said.

"There's going to be a lot of excitement; a huge buzz in our young camp and I don't see that buzz ever getting any lower.

"When we assembled on Monday, a lot of girls said it kind of felt like the first day of school. To think we've been working really hard - there have been a lot of challenges and sacrifices made by everyone – to get to this point, then that feeling of being here now has made people have to pinch themselves.

"It's kind of crazy. Most of us in the team haven't even been to a World Cup so to be able to play in our first here and home, I don't even know what emotions to anticipate."

They now have just under two weeks to get their head's around what awaits them, as the group will remain together for a non-game week this week as they put the final touches on their World Cup preparations.

They go into the week off buoyed from a massive win over Japan, which was something of a bounce-back performance after the side claimed an unimpressive win against Australia in Adelaide in their previous match. The Black Ferns opens their World Cup campaign against Australia on October 8.

Speaking on the side's performances in recent matches, Smith said he was at fault for the performance in Adelaide, and that his side did a lot of impressive things against Japan.

"I was a wee bit surprised at our accuracy; you could go through a training run and drop all those balls," he said.

"To play the game that we want to play, you've got to free up and you've got to love what you do, and I think we saw that today.

"I wasn't too happy after Adelaide. I think I changed too much. But we settled down well. I think we're in a good place and have a good week coming up.

"Being able to stay in the same place for a week without having a game is good; normally we have to go home then come back in, so I'm really pleased we can stay together up here and get another good week of high-speed training in."