Maddie Feaunati: Exeter’s England star reflects on World Cup win

And what about Exeter’s prospects for the forthcoming season?

The Chiefs finished fifth in Premiership Women’s Rugby last season, missing out on a place in the top four play-offs for the first time in three campaigns.

As well as Feaunati, Exeter also had Claudia Moloney-MacDonald in the England World Cup squad while beaten finalists Canada had five Chiefs in their party.

Along with a number of other internationals and a host of promising young players coming through, Feaunati is hopeful Exeter can return to the top four this season.

“We’ve got girls that played almost for every single country in the World Cup coming back with their experience and I’m sure they all got a lot from the World Cup in their own sense,” she says.

“Then we’ve got a bunch of young girls coming through. They’re a different breed this lot because they’ve grown up playing rugby.

“Most of us, we all played other sports and then we we got involved in rugby and all our other sports helped rugby.

“But these girls have played touch since they were younger, they got involved in rugby clubs since they’ve been five years old and we’re seeing that impact that it’s having on them now because with these university girls that come to training, I’m like ‘I’ve got to stay on top of my game’.

“So keep supporting us because it’s great that we’ve got a women’s team here, but it means nothing without support, so you’ve just got to keep giving everything to us.”