'Scotland don't want to be World Cup one-hit wonders'

Scotland thrashed Wales in their Group A opener in Salford

Women's Rugby World Cup 2025: Scotland v Fiji

Venue: Salford Community Stadium Date: Saturday, 30 August Kick-off: 14:45 BST

Coverage: Live on BBC Two, BBC iPlayer, BBC Sport website & app, Radio 5 Live Sports Extra 2 and BBC Sounds

After a perfect start to their Women's Rugby World Cup campaign with a clinical destruction of Wales, the challenge for Scotland as they prepare to face Fiji is get back to the lofty standards they have set themselves.

The Scots know a second-straight victory is likely to be rewarded with a place in the quarter-finals.

They have put themselves in a fantastic position and the last thing they want is for their performance against Wales to be the outlier, for this side to be remembered as World Cup one-hit wonders.

"I think it's easy for other people to maybe look and be like, 'oh, a wee bit of pressure off', but actually there's more pressure on than ever, because you can't just put out a performance like that and not back it up," said Scotland lock Emma Wassell.

"We hold that quite heavy on us. We really do want to show that we want to build within this World Cup, it's not just going to be one performance, we weren't just performing for that one game."

'You can't just go from cloud nine to cloud 10'

After the exhilaration of that outstanding six-try demolition of Wales, captain Rachel Malcolm has spoken this week of how the squad had to have an "emotional decompress", rather than simply riding the momentum from Wales into Fiji.

She pointed out you cannot just "go from cloud nine to cloud 10".

Whereas matchday one was viewed in advance as a 50-50 game - nobody saw a 30-point win coming - this time Scotland are firm favourites.

Fiji are ranked 14th in the world, eight places below the Scots, who moved up to sixth off the back of the win over Wales.

Having been thrashed 65-7 in their Pool B opener by Canada, the Fijians look there for the taking, but the Scots are not about to allow complacency to creep into their psyche and risk squandering such a promising start to the tournament.

"There's no option there, we have to go and get the job done," Malcolm said.

"We have looked at the game from the weekend and looked at some of the missed opportunities as well as the things that we did well.

"It's quite easy when you lose to completely pull a game apart and look at all the bits that you can improve on, but it's also really easy when you win to think that was the complete performance.

"The first thing we did when we looked at it was recognise those bits that we can still change and we can still get more from.

"There's loads of small fixes within the game where I think we missed opportunities so that's what we've tried to do.

"We've tried to treat it the exact same that we would have treated it if we'd come out the other side of that result, to make sure that we're not missing anything.

"We know against Fiji it's going to be such a different test. We need to be ready to take every opportunity that's given to us."