Whilst the 30 players competing in each match of the IRB Women's Rugby World Cup have shown that the women's game has moved on apace since the last global tournament in 2002, the 12 females within the match officials team is proof that the same is happening in the middle and on the sidelines.
The standout performer amongst them is Australian Sarah Corrigan, who, after excelling in her two matches so far - England v South Africa and the thrilling semi final between England and Canada - has been awarded the third place play-off between France and Canada.
"I'm really looking forward to it, it should be fantastic," she told rwcwomens.com in a break from preparations for the game.
"This will be the first time I've refereed a non-English speaking team so that's going to provide some challenges. I've refereed Canada already so I'm pretty happy with the way they play the game, but I'll probably have a look at France to see where they are as well."
Appropriate technology
Along with the rest of the match officials at this tournament, Corrigan can call upon some impressive technology to analyse her own performance and brush up on the teams she will be refereeing next. "It's brilliant," she says. "You can sit at a computer and click - I want to watch all Samoa's scrums for the whole of the tournament - and magically they're in front of you.
"When I do my game analysis after the game, if I've had a problem with scrums I can just go through that or if there's something particular happening in the lineouts I can bring them up and have a look. And leading into a game, if I haven't refereed that team before, I'll probably bring up their tackle ruck mauls and their scrums, just to see how they go, if there are any trends."