Steinberg calls for improvements to WC

??It is disappointing that the competition goes straight to semi finals. Things have moved on from when?˜semi finals at the Women??s World Cup were not that competitive and while I am not sure there are 16 teams in the world who could play at this level right now, I do believe that if we have 12 sides we should have the top eight go through to the next knockout stages.??

??There are more and more competitive games and a team like Canada, who were unbeaten, had to wait to see if they went through and hang on other results for example so it is pretty obvious to us there are at least six or seven high quality teams who can compete on the day so with that number we should be expanding?˜making this a fairer competition.??

??Against New Zealand, we were pretty happy with parts of our play and we knew going in that if we gave the Black Ferns some time to play it would be very dangerous and that is what happened in the second half. We had chances that we didn??t take but even if we had, they had too much quality for us.

??We knew coming here we were in the pool of death. Our performance against Ireland was good but we need to be better.??

Steinberg has also been outspoken about the IRB??s refereeing stance at?˜Women??s World Cups, whereby the world??s leading female referees are given the reins.?˜

It is a policy that has frustrated many coaches and players, who privately recognise that while there are indeed?˜some high quality female referees involved, they?˜would also hugely welcome the presence of some of the world??s more experienced test referees.?˜

?? I will be quite honest - I think it is unfair on the players. My experience ,not just in rugby but in business, is that when men make appointments they tend to make them and say we need ??women something?? but when women make them, they generally just want the best so I feel if you asked any woman here what they would want they would say they just want the best.?˜