\n<\/p>\n
England’s World Cup-winning captain Zoe Stratford has announced she is pregnant with her first child.<\/b><\/p>\n
Announcing the news on Instagram the 29-year-old said the baby is due in September.<\/p>\n
“We are so incredibly grateful and excited,” added Stratford.<\/p>\n
The news comes seven months after she led the Red Roses to a World Cup triumph on home soil.<\/p>\n
Stratford’s news will rule her out of the Women’s Six Nations, where England will open their campaign against Ireland at Allianz Stadium, Twickenham on Saturday, 11 April.<\/p>\n
England are yet to confirm who will lead the side in the 2026 campaign, but Marlie Packer and Meg Jones were vice-captains during the World Cup, with Alex Matthews taking the skipper’s armband for their pool match against Australia.<\/p>\n
Red Roses head coach John Mitchell will name his Six Nations squad on Friday.<\/p>\n
Stratford was named World Player of the Year in 2021 and has also co-captained her club Gloucester-Hartpury to three back-to-back Premiership Women’s Rugby titles.<\/p>\n
Since the World Cup success, she has also opened a coffee shop with England and Gloucester team-mate Natasha Hunt.<\/p>\n
Stratford becomes the third England women’s player to announce they are expecting this year, following Bristol duo Lark Atkin-Davies and Abbie Ward.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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England’s World Cup-winning captain Zoe Stratford has announced she is pregnant with her first child. Announcing the news on Instagram the 29-year-old said the baby is due in September. “We are so incredibly grateful and excited,” added Stratford. The news comes seven months after she led the Red Roses to a World Cup triumph on<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10862,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rugby"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10861\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}