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Women's World Cup: Rapinoe shows her value in opening win

Returning from injury, the winger scored two goals and helped set up another in a 3-1 win over Australia.

A lot of attention was heaped on the absence of Alex Morgan when the U.S. national team ended its Women's World Cup preparations with a whimper, playing to a scoreless draw with South Korea. Was the prolific striker's knee injury to blame for the lethargic outlook?

In retrospect, that might have been the wrong question.

It flew under the radar, but the U.S. also was without the services of winger Megan Rapinoe because of a minor knock suffered in training the day before.