On the surface, the Wallaroos' 47-7 loss to England might have seemed to highlight the gap between the Red Roses and the rest.
However, those who watched the game knew it was far from the case, with Tabua Tuinakauvadra and assistant coach Gill Bourke noticing several differences.
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In leading for the opening 30 minutes against the English, the Wallaroos became the first team in the last eight hours of Red Rose rugby to lead the world number one side.
Despite the hosts scoring four tries early in the second half, Australia was also able to stem the flow in the final quarter of the match, with only one other team able to accomplish that feat in the last 12 months (being France in the 2025 Six Nations).
“I don't know how many teams have held England scoreless for the last 15 minutes of a game,” Bourke said to reporters on Tuesday.
“Some of our bench came on earlier through injury and stuff like that. But ultimately the impact that they made was really crucial to how that final score finished.
“It was massive for us. I mean, we were obviously in a situation where, yes, we wanted to win the game. After a couple of lulls in the second half, that score started moving on a bit.
“[But] the girls came on and they finished it off for us.”
The entire World Cup has been a huge learning experience for the wider squad, with Tuinakauvadra not only coming up against the world’s best, but doing so in hostile territory.
It's only stoked further excitement for when the World Cup comes down under in four years time.
“It was pretty cool to actually try and find my family in the crowd,” Tuinakauvadra said.
“When I got on, and made a line break, the whole crowd erupted.
“I felt weak, like, what is going on here? You can see how much of an advantage it is to have a home World Cup for them.
“We're getting the reach and the involvement within women's rugby is going up. It's an exciting four years to see like where we can get to in terms of the support we can get behind us for it to like turn out like it did on Sunday.
“In terms of our growth, we talked a lot about hard growth and the building the team to get to where it has been today.
“We're a different team from the start of the year to where we are now. We're much more capable of taking on those bigger teams than the public think we are.”
“It's important that we take it game by game and we never jump ahead and don't assume anything,” Bourke added.
“We always just focus on ourselves and putting ourselves in the best position to compete against whatever is coming against us each week.”
The growth in the Wallaroos has extended off the field, with the engagement and profile of the side booming off the back of last year's WXV 2 triumph and current World Cup progress.
“The digital footprint is so real,” Tuinakauvadra said.
“We're always encouraged to be ourselves. I think we had Arizona Leger come in last year. She'd spoken a lot about being your genuine self.
“That spoke to a lot of the girls in terms of who we present ourselves, as to the media and online spaces.”
While the engagement and personalities have been a major success of the World Cup, it has been backed up with some exciting rugby, with competitive teams in Spain, Japan and Fiji being capped off with South Africa making their first ever quarter final.
With the Wallaroos back in knockout territory, the side will be looking to pull off a maiden victory over Canada.
With so much on the line as the side chases its 2010 bronze medal benchmark, Bourke believes the side is primed to produce a breakthrough scalp against one of the top three sides.
“You plan to go to the end of the tournament,” Bourke said.
“That's where you want to get to, knowing that we've got some big fish in the way to take off.
“The vibe of this team is that we look in terms of what we're doing first, we look at what we're doing well, we look at what we can improve, and then we apply that into the opposition that we're playing next week.
“This week it's Canada, and hopefully the week after it's somebody else. [We were] the only team this year to be ahead of England at the 30-minute mark.
“Maybe the result didn't reflect that because of a few bits and pieces that we lapsed on.
“But that's a massive performance for us to put in against the world number one. It gives us a lot of confidence going into this week.”
