England 33 Ireland 12

After the high of last year’s World Cup, England were somewhat rusty in this Women’s Six Nations opener. But a five-try win against Ireland nonetheless suggested they have enough firepower to ease towards another Six Nations title.

Being crowned world champions capped off a generational moment for the women’s game and it is hard to know what there is left for the Red Roses to conquer. John Mitchell’s side are now on a 34-match winning streak and are unbeaten in the Six Nations since 2018. They are already a team of standard setters, record breakers and history makers. Yet there remains a relentless drive to achieve more.

In front of a 77,120-strong crowd inside the Allianz Stadium – a record for a Women’s Six Nations match – they laboured to a bonus-point victory, but it was still another comfortable win.

Mitchell was expecting his Red Roses to be “clunky” in places. It was as if he had a crystal ball. With a quartet of their usual forwards missing through pregnancy, including their influential leader Zoe Stratford who was on punditry duties for the BBC, England certainly lacked their usual crispness.

Given what they have achieved on the world stage, the expectation on this England team perhaps overwhelmed them at times, while tournament-ending injuries to Morwenna Talling and Natasha Hunt soured the occasion. “Naturally we’re a new team, it’s a new start and there’s going to be plenty of learnings. Some people went off plan,” Mitchell conceded.

England’s attempts at spreading the ball wide were thwarted by a well-drilled Ireland side who were impressive in defence but still stifled by their opponent’s sheer physicality.

A try from Amy Cokayne and a double from Sarah Bern proved enough to kill off Ireland in a lacklustre first half, before England’s back line clicked in patches after the break, with Jess Breach and Ellie Kildunne dotting down. In her first outing as England captain, Meg Jones was pivotal.

Ireland came to Twickenham promising much but ultimately delivered very little. They can at least take heart from two late tries scored by Anna McGann and Erin King – and the fact that this was their closest losing margin to England in more than a decade.

Fittingly, it took a Jones turnover to launch the platform for the Red Roses’ first score. Booting the ball to the corner after Cliodhna Moloney-MacDonald conceded a breakdown penalty, they resorted to route one by deploying their line-out maul and Cokayne rumbled over.

Ireland surrendered promising field position in the first half when scrum-half Emily Lane knocked on as she was scooping the ball out from a ruck. For a side who are not used to playing in front of tens of thousands of people, it was a classic example of how they succumbed to stage fright. England worked their way up the pitch and Bern crashed over under the posts.

England continued to play a savvy game, keeping it tight among the forwards as their back line – usually charged with electric pace and zip – was repeatedly thwarted by green shirts. Kildunne spilt the ball in contact, while Breach and Claudia Moloney-MacDonald (in an interesting quirk, the wife of the Ireland hooker, with the couple playing against each other for the first time) were repeatedly hunted down on their wings. The hosts appeared to miss the pace offered by Abby Dow, the combative Red Roses speedster who retired after last year’s World Cup, and the directness of Tatyana Heard, their centre who was ruled out of this championship with a foot injury. Even Holly Aitchison, who was chosen ahead of Zoe Harrison at fly-half, struggled to impose any real danger with the boot.

England, though, are in a different stratosphere to teams such as Ireland and are capable of winning ugly. They added a third before the break when Moloney-Macdonald latched on to a loose ball and arced towards the corner, feeding the ball inside to Bern, who scored her second.

England’s back line clicked on the cusp of half-time when Jones cut a piercing line before offloading to Kildunne, but the Red Roses poster girl dropped the ball over the whitewash when trying to ground it one-handed. It epitomised the off-colour nature of the Red Roses’ display. New connections were not quite clicking, while the lateral running game among their backs lacked any ruthless edge. Inside the Allianz Stadium, the record crowd fell discernibly flat.

Ireland showed more resolve after the break, a testament to the fact that the second half ended 12 apiece. Breach did phenomenally well to chase down a ball that had been hoofed through by Jones before wrestling the ball over the whitewash. Harrison’s impact was obvious, zipping a looping pass out to Kildunne, the full-back finishing in the corner. By the time England rolled out their trademark cowboy celebration, a party atmosphere swept around the stadium.

Ireland will take pride from how they conjured two second-half scores via McGann and captain King. Bringing an energy late on that the Red Roses could not match, Scott Bemand, their head coach, implored his team to use their much-improved display as a springboard for the rest of the championship.

Intriguingly, no England side – male or female – have won a Six Nations in the year following a World Cup. The team of part-time teachers and plumbers who triumphed in 2014 endured a miserable championship the following spring. That is the next challenge facing this world-beating Red Roses team if they are to create the “dynasty” that Mitchell mentioned earlier this week. On this evidence, there is still work to be done.

Match details

Scoring sequennce 5-0 Cokayne try, 7-0 Rowland con, 12-0 Bern try, 14-0 Roland con, 19-0 Bern try, 21-0 Roland con, 26-0 Breach try, 28-0 Rowland con, 33-0 Kildunne try, 33-5 McGann try, 33-10 King try, 33-12 O’Brien con.

England E Kildunne; J Breach, M Jones, H Rowland, C Moloney-Macdonald; H Aitchison (Z Harrison 50), (N Hunt 50, E Sing 64); K Clifford (M Carson 50), A Cokayne (C Powell 69), S Bern (M Muir 50), M Talling (H Lutui 43), L Ives Campion, M Feaunati (A Burton 69), S Kabeya, A Matthews.

Ireland S Flood; B Parsons (A McGann 60), A Dalton, E Higgins (N McGillivray 50), V Elmes Kinlan; D O’Brien, E Lane (K Whelan 69); E Perry (N O’Dowd 50), C Moloney-Macdonald (N Jones 60), L Djougang (E Cahill 69), D Wall (R Campbell 50), F Tuite, B Hogan, E King, A Wafer (G Moore 62).

Referee Clara Munarini (Italy).

Attendance 77,120.

England face lock crisis with Talling injury blow

England are facing a second-row crisis after Morwenna Talling was ruled out for the rest of the Six Nations with injury.

In the latest setback to England’s options at lock, Talling was helped off the field at the Allianz Stadium after suffering a lower-leg injury during the Red Roses’ 33-12 win over Ireland.

England are already missing a trio of their first-choice second rows through pregnancy after Zoe Stratford, Abbie Ward and Rosie Galligan all announced they are expecting.

In a double blow for England, replacement scrum-half Natasha Hunt also limped off in the 50th minute with what appeared to be a right knee injury, forcing wing Claudia Moloney-MacDonald to fill in at nine. Both Hunt and Talling were later pictured on crutches.

John Mitchell, the Red Roses head coach, quipped that his World Cup-winning side could be a “team of back rowers” by the end of the championship.

“They’ll be long-term [injuries] sadly,” Mitchell said. “We’ve got a good diagnosis on them already, but I’m not technically good enough to explain what they are, but they’ll be out of the tournament.

“You never really want to see your team-mates get injured. But I guess for us we’ll have to adapt. We’ve lost four international locks so we’ll probably be a team of back rowers by the end of the competition. We’ll just have to grow somebody else. There’s different ways to play this game – if we have to rely on back rowers we’ll make it work.”

Such are England’s dwindling second-row stocks that Lilli Ives Campion, who has six Test caps, is now the Red Roses’ most experienced player in the position. “Lilli is four years in the pathway and you wouldn’t have thought that was her sixth Test,” Mitchell said. “I thought she was outstanding today. Young Lilli is going to have to last the year.”

More responsibility is likely to fall on the young shoulders of Haineala Lutui, the 19-year-old second row who made her senior Test debut when she replaced Talling at Twickenham.

“We’re just going to have to get the best out of the youth,” said Mitchell, who warned other personnel would have to adapt. “We’re going to have to ask people to play dual roles.”

Elsewhere on the opening day of the championship, France ran out comfortable 40-7 winners against Italy in Grenoble while Scotland pipped Wales 24-19 in Cardiff.