Ellie Kildunne: 'It is instinct. I can’t say I meant to do it on my thigh'

Ellie Kildunne felt England grew into the game more and more as it went on after opening their Women’s World Cup campaign with a 69-7 victory over the United States in Sunderland.

The Red Roses kicked off the tournament with an 11-try win against the USA and took an early lead through Sadia Kabeya and Hannah Botterman before Erica Jarrell-Searcy pulled one back.

After Alev Kelter was shown a yellow card, Maud Muir and Kildunne scored in quick succession for the hosts to lead 28-7 at half-time.

England improved further in the second half and a ruthless display saw seven more tries scored as Abby Dow, Kildunne and Amy Cokayne all crossed, while Jess Breach and Lark Atkin-Davies bagged braces.

Kildunne said: “It was a game definitely of two halves, we found our way and fixed things coming into the second half.

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“What a game to kick off, not just how we played and how the USA played, but the crowd and the atmosphere was amazing.”

The game was played out in front of a tournament-record crowd of 42,723 at the Stadium of Light and Kildunne won player of the match for her relentless work rate, where she scored two tries.

She was ever-present in England’s formidable back three, who combined four times to score and the full-back praised the work of a “tight unit”.

“As a back three we’ve played together a long time,” Kildunne added.

“Even with the depth we’ve got with Emma Sing and Claudia (Moloney-MacDonald) as well, we’re a tight unit, we train really hard together, we know how each other play, we know the speeds of each other.

“When someone’s running down the wing it’s about supporting them and being that touch if you need to.”

In one of her finest moments, Kildunne put her football skills to the test, controlling the ball with her thigh while charging down the wing before offloading to Breach to score.

Speaking about that moment, she said: “It is instinct. I can’t say I meant to do it on my thigh but I saw it curving towards the touchline.

“I needed to put a body part there to catch it. It just so happened to be my thigh.”

England are tournament favourites and after earning their first win of the competition, they face Samoa next Saturday.

“You take confidence from every game, you learn from every game and now it’s onto the next one,” Kildunne said.

“What can we learn from this, how can we progress? We know Samoa is going to be a different opponent and we’re ready for it.”

The United States had shown flashes of promise particularly at the start of the game and skipper Kate Zackary insisted her side will remember the “small wins”.

“On the pitch, the main thing we talked about was there’s still two more games, as we mentioned, it’s pool play and we can’t go into a dark space,” Zackary said.

“It’s only day one of the tournament. For us it’s about remembering the small wins, Erica again had that breakaway try.

“We stole some lineouts, scrums we cleaned up a little bit, but once we did get the detail right we also held England at that area.”