Keswick's Abbie Scott will be looking to help lead England to glory at this weekend’s women’s Rugby Union World Cup Final.

The Cumbrian has played her part in helping the Red Roses reach this stage in the tournament.

The former Keswick School and Sedbergh School student will hope to keep her place in the starting line-up and earn her 21st England cap as Simon Middleton’s men look to retain their crown against New Zealand tomorrow (7.45pm kick-off – ITV1).

The 24-year-old, who plays for Darlington Mowden Park, has started all of England’s games, except the group-stage success over Italy as the Red Roses rotated their squad.

Scott is accompanied in the squad by fellow Darlington players Katy Mclean, Heather Kerr, Zoe Aldcroft and La Toya Mason in the squad.

Captain Sarah Hunter was understandably delighted after the Red Roses’ semi-final 20-3 success against France and paid tribute to her side’s “white wall”.

“We’ve done the job that we wanted and every player from one to 23 deserves a huge amount of credit,” Hunter said to England Rugby.

“Our defence won that game. There was never any concern in our minds that France were going to cross our tryline.

“They came at us, they played well and gave us our toughest test so far but we had the right mindset and fought for every inch out there.”

England’s full-back Danielle Waterman has been ruled out of the final at the Kingspan Stadium with concussion.

Reigning champions England will be aiming to defend their World Cup crown, which they won in 2014 when they beat Canada 21-9 in Paris in that final.

Meanwhile, with the start of the Rugby Union season around the corner, Cumbrian clubs have been preparing for the big kick-off.

Aspatria had to call-off their planned friendly against Penrith last night.

The Black Reds suffered two bad injuries in their opening warm-up match at Fylde on Saturday.

Jack Clegg broke his arm, and has since had his arm plated, while Mark Beverley suffered a head injury and is still in a Blackpool hospital.

Aspatria secretary Barney Clegg said: “Under the circumstances, we didn’t feel it wise to play another friendly and risk more injuries when we have a tough opening league game with Wigton.

“Fylde fielded a young, exciting side and scored three good tries in the first half. The game was abandoned in the 55th minute after the injury to Mark.”

Elsewhere, Carlisle’s head coach David Stout is one of three finalists in the sports section of this year’s Carlisle Living awards.

The two other nominations are John Halpin, Carlisle United FC Football in the Community Officer, and Carlisle’s Helen Housby, an England netball player.

The winner will be announced at the awards dinner and presentation for more than 400 guests on September 8.

Stout led Carlisle to promotion from North Lancs Cumbria last season and is hoping for a big show from the City side in North One West.

Penrith played Biggar for the third time in a pre-season trial game.

Last year, with a makeshift squad, they were beaten three tries to one. They still had a makeshift squad this time but ended up sharing six tries with a decent Biggar team, who according to their back-up staff, were pretty much at full strength.

Penrith fielded a strong pack but were short of experience behind the scrum. The game was played in three half-hour sessions with players on both sides being swapped on a regular basis.

Penrith did well with the toss and played with the elements, on a dirty afternoon weather-wise, for two of the thirds.

They scored first when George Graham broke to score.

The Scots scored right at the end of the half-hour from a quickly-taken penalty under the Penrith posts.

Graham was the catalyst for the only score in the middle session, he made the break that was continued by Will Morgan and the ball then came to Mike Raine who crashed over.

Biggar scored early in the final 30 minutes when they ran back a clearance kick.

Penrith then kicked a penalty to the corner, where young John Dent, who made a pleasing start to his Penrith career, took one of many takes at the line-out and the home eight drove for the line, with Craig Price claiming the try.

Biggar scored a third try to even-up the score late on.