Dates confirmed for Women’s Rugby World Cup 2021 European Qualifiers

The first game for Scotland will see the side face Italy away on the weekend of the 5/6 December, which will also double up as a final match in the Women’s Six Nations tournament.

The winner of the Women’s REC 2020 will join Scotland, Ireland and Italy, who have already been confirmed by World Rugby to take part in the Rugby World Cup 2021 European Qualifiers.

Spain feature in the two remaining games of the Women’s REC 2020 as they host Russia on the weekend of October 24/25, before facing the Netherlands on October 31.

The European Qualifiers will be played as a single round-robin tournament, to be held on the weekends of 5, 12 and 19 of December 2020.

The winner of the tournament will qualify for Rugby World Cup 2021 and the runner-up will progress to the final qualification tournament, which will be organised by World Rugby in 2021.

Interim Scotland Women Head Coach, Bryan Easson, said: “We are under no illusions on how tough this busy period will be and we will have to be at our very best to progress through to the Rugby World Cup.”

“The teams competing for a place at the Rugby World Cup are very good sides, however we have shown recently that we have made big improvements on and off the field and we feel that with good preparation over the next period that we will be in a good place to qualify.”

Head of Women and Girls Rugby at Scottish Rugby, Gemma Fay, said: “Our main focus this year is qualifying for the Women’s Rugby World Cup and we are looking forward to the upcoming fixtures in December.”

“We know that we have a challenging few months ahead, but we are looking to make the most of every opportunity and we firmly believe that we can rise to the challenge.”

The Scotland squad will be reconvening to begin their preparations over the next few weeks ahead of the rescheduled Six Nations fixtures in October.