Jorja Miller is one of the most exciting young talents in New Zealand rugby and many back home expect the loose forward to have a breakout tournament at her first World Cup over the next month.
The 21-year-old is already more than familiar to fans of Rugby Sevens having last year bagged an Olympic gold medal in Paris and this year won the Player of the Year award in the World Sevens series.
If selected at openside flanker for New Zealand’s World Cup opener against Spain in York on Sunday, however, Miller will be playing only her third test in the 15-woman game.
She made enough of an impression in her first two tests, a 79-14 win over the United States in May and a 37-12 victory over Australia last month, to suggest her inexperience might not be too much of an issue.
Against the Wallaroos in Wellington, she caught a line drop-out 40 metres from the Australia line and, with her braided blonde hair trailing behind her, jinked her way through half a dozen tacklers to score her first test try.
Tougher challenges are likely to come at the World Cup, especially in the maelstrom of the breakdown against the powerhouses of the women’s game, but Miller lacks nothing in ambition.
“For as long I can remember I’ve always dreamed of being the greatest rugby player in the world,” she said in the NZR+ documentary Triple Threat.
“I want to change the game. I want to do things that no one’s ever done, male or female.”
Miller was one of four players from the New Zealand sevens team who won the World Seven series crown in May and then clinched a place in the Black Ferns squad.
“The biggest shift from sevens to 15s is the physicality of it,” said Miller, who plays at flyhalf in the shorter format.
“Now being in the loose forwards, you need that physicality to be able to put those tackles on the bigger forwards. It was overwhelming at the start knowing how big of a task it was going to be, that transition.”
She clearly did well enough to convince coach Allan Bunting and his fellow selectors that she was worthy of a place in a Black Ferns squad that will be bidding to lift the World Cup for a seventh time in 10 editions.
They won their sixth World Cup at Eden Park three years ago with a stunning upset in the final against England, who are even hotter favourites to claim the title on home soil this year.
Miller likes nothing better than a challenge, however.
“I’d love to test myself in the biggest arena, hopefully Twickenham, in the final, sold out, versus England,” she said in the documentary.
“That’s why I play the game.”
