Australia Win Record Fourth Women’s World Cup

Jillaroos World Cup Final Settled In One Half

The final was decided before half-time. The NRL’s official match report records that Jaime Chapman and Shaylee Bent crossed inside the first six minutes, and by the time a drinks break was called midway through the half in Brisbane’s stifling heat, the score already read 24-0. Australia added two more tries before the break and led 34-6, a margin New Zealand never seriously threatened across a scoreless second half from the champions.

Chapman opened the scoring from a scrum after a New Zealand error with the opening set, diving over in the corner. Bent sliced through from a short pass close to the line for 12-0. Chapman then finished acrobatically in the 15th minute after Jesse Southwell took on the line and captain Isabelle Kelly put her in, before Jessica Sergis broke away from long range for the fourth try. Shannon Mato crashed over from close range to give the Kiwi Ferns their first points, but Chapman completed her hat-trick with a 70-metre charge and Tamika Upton combined with Abbi Church on the right edge to close the half at 34-6.

Southwell converted five of the six tries. Her selection was the coach’s big call of the week: Jess Skinner started the 21-year-old Broncos playmaker ahead of Jocelyn Kelleher, and Southwell repaid it with five goals from six attempts, two try assists and three line-break assists. Former Jillaroos captain Ali Brigginshaw, who did not make this squad, told Channel 7: “You can see that having Jesse Southwell in the team going up in sixes is a huge difference. It is her goalkicking that is impeccable in a game like this.”

Chapman Finishes With 13 Tries And A Share Of The Record

Player of the match Chapman finished the tournament with 13 tries, equalling the World Cup tournament record, and 18 tries in her 10-Test career. Her final was a full winger’s game as well as a finishing one: the NRL’s final stats credit her with 151 run metres, behind only Sergis, who ran for 198 metres, while Kelly added 142 metres. Eight Jillaroos in total ran for more than 100 metres, against just two Kiwi Ferns, fullback Apii Nicholls and winger Leianne Tufuga.

Chapman was quick to hand the credit back after the game. “There is no better feeling than winning a World Cup on home turf,” she said, before laughing off her own record haul: “I do nothing, they just pass me the ball. I just finish it off, but all the hard work is done in the middle. I have got the easy job.”

The hat-trick also closed a tournament that had already produced the biggest win in women’s international rugby league history, Australia’s 124-6 pool win over Wales on November 1, in which Chapman scored six tries. Across their three pool games the Jillaroos scored 242 points and conceded six, then survived their one real test of the tournament in the semi-final, coming from 8-0 down to beat Fiji 30-14 in Sydney.

Kiwi Ferns Win The Second Half And Lose The Final

New Zealand’s afternoon was the opposite shape. Arriving at Suncorp chasing a fourth World Cup crown of their own, the Kiwi Ferns held just 42 per cent of possession in the first half and were, in the NRL report’s words, blown off the park. By full-time they had levelled possession at 50-50 and kept Australia scoreless for the entire second half, extending a tournament pattern in which they did not concede a point in the second half of any game they played.

That resistance produced the final points of the match, Mackenzie Wiki scoring on the full-time siren to take New Zealand into double figures after Mato’s converted first-half try. But the Ferns’ day ended with injury added to defeat: star playmaker Raecene McGregor and back-rower Kaiyah Atai both left for head injury assessments inside the last 15 minutes, and Nicholls suffered a hamstring injury in the closing minutes.

For prop Millie Elliott, the win closed a career. Just as in the 2022 final, when Australia beat New Zealand 54-4 at Old Trafford, the Jillaroos sent her out on a high in her final game of rugby league.

Four Straight Titles, And Clear Of New Zealand

The record at stake in Brisbane was a shared one. Before Sunday, only two nations had ever won this tournament, and they stood level at three titles each: New Zealand won the first three editions in 2000, 2003 and 2008, and Australia answered in 2013, 2017 and in the 2021 tournament played in 2022. This was the fifth straight final between the two countries, and Australia have now won the last four of them.

That makes the Jillaroos the first nation to four Women’s Rugby League World Cup titles, and four in a row, a run that stretches across 13 years and three host countries. The full scoring record for the final, as listed in the LeagueUnlimited match report, reads: Australia tries to Chapman (3), Bent, Sergis and Upton, with Southwell converting five from six; New Zealand tries to Mato and Wiki, with Chantay Kiria-Ratu converting one from two.

The gap the scoreboard showed is the story the next cycle has to answer. New Zealand remain the second-best side in the world and still could not get within 24 points, at a tournament where the rest of the field showed signs of improvement without producing a side that looked close to beating Australia. The Jillaroos head into the summer as champions again, with a young playmaker installed, a record-equalling winger in her prime, and a title defence in 2030 that the rest of the world has four years to prepare for.

References

NRL.com, “First-half blitz delivers Jillaroos fourth straight World Cup,” November 15, 2026. LeagueUnlimited, “Australia cruise to World Cup final success,” November 15, 2026. Fox Sports, “Shock Jillaroos call pays off as superstar makes history,” November 15, 2026.