Rampant England seal dominant Ireland win at Twickenham
England remain on course for a sixth successive Guinness Women’s Six Nations title following a commanding 88-10 victory against Ireland at Twickenham.
The Red Roses put on a show in front of the 48,778 fans who travelled to south-west London, running in 14 tries as they stretched their winning run in the Championship to 27 matches.
Abby Dow and Ellie Kildunne both helped themselves to hat-tricks, while Megan Jones and Jess Breach each crossed the whitewash twice.
Ireland’s reply came via the boot of Dannah O’Brien and a second-half penalty try.
It means the Red Roses travel to Bordeaux to play France next weekend with a third successive Grand Slam – and sixth clean sweep in a row – firmly in their sights.
England suffered a late set-back ahead of kick-off, as Rosie Galligan was forced to withdraw having suffered a thumb injury during the warm-up. Mowenna Talling was promoted into the second row while Lizzie Hanlon took the Sale Sharks lock’s place on the replacements’ bench.
Galligan has impressed during the Championship but it was never likely to be a change that derailed the Red Roses juggernaut, and so it proved.
Much of the talk pre-match had centred around how long Ireland – revitalised against Wales last week following a disappointing home defeat to Italy in round two – could stay in the contest at Twickenham.
The answer: Less than 19 minutes. That is how long it took the hosts to rack up their fourth try bonus-point of the Championship and leave most of the bumper crowd dreaming of next weekend’s Grand Slam decider in Bordeaux.
Of course, there is a reason England hold a healthy lead at the top of the World Rugby Women’s Rankings and are in the midst of a 27-match winning run in the Women’s Six Nations.
The Red Roses play with an intensity in both attack and defence that few teams – maybe none other than France, New Zealand and Canada – can live with and twists opposition teams into knots.
Ireland’s defensive plans were shredded in the seventh minute at Twickenham as Lark Atkin-Davies tore through a gap in the visitors’ line and Alex Matthews took the Red Roses deep into their territory.
After the Red Roses number eight was brought down the ball was recycled to the right wing, where Dow handed off the covering Lauren Delany and dotted down.
Aitchison missed the conversion but England extended their advantage within three minutes following a scintillating break from Natasha Hunt. The scrum-half was brought down before the line, but was on hand moments later to pick up from the breakdown and snipe over the try-line.
The Red Roses had Ireland where they wanted them and in the 13th minute Dow came off her wing to set the platform for Jones to power over.
It had been a whirlwind six minutes but the hosts were far from done and Zoe Aldcroft was soon exploiting more space in the Irish defence, taking a pass just beyond halfway and backing her speed and strength to get to the line.
Aitchison added her third conversion of the afternoon to give England a 26-0 lead with barely a quarter of the match played.
Dannah O’Brien got the visitors on the board in the 24th minute, becoming the first Irishwoman to score against England since Clare Molloy in November 2018 – also at Twickenham – in the process but it continued to be one-way traffic.
Kildunne got in on the act in the 28th minute, following a well-worked lineout move involving Tatyana Heard and Aitchison, before Dow added England’s sixth try with less than four minutes of the half remaining.
That effort came shortly after Dow had been denied a score by a knock-on and the half would end with a Jones try ruled out for a forward pass.
The only blot on England’s copy book as they turned round 38-3 in front came in the form of an injury to Atkin-Davies, who limped off with five minutes of the first half remaining.
It was a similar story at the start of the second half as Breach raced away down the left wing to score a stunning seventh England try before Sadia Kabeya added an eighth following consultation between referee Aurélie Groizeleau and her TMO.
Credit to Ireland, they never took a backward step at Twickenham and were rewarded with a penalty try in the 56th minute after replacement England scrum-half Lucy Packer was adjudged to have brought down a maul illegally as it trundled towards the line.
Packer was sent to the sin-bin but the Red Roses have grown accustomed to playing with 14 this tournament and they again showed it has little impact on their effectiveness.
Following good work from Kabeya, Jones glided past several attempted Irish tackles to score England’s ninth try – less than two minutes after Packer had left the field.
And with the Harlequins player still off the pitch, Jones and Kildunne created space on the right wing for Dow to speed into and complete her hat-trick.
Kildunne scored her second and third try of the match in the final 13 minutes – either side of Breach’s second – while Maddie Feaunati crossed the whitewash for the first time in her Test career to complete a resounding win.
Comments on RugbyPass
I am really looking forward to Leigh Halfpenny playing his first Super rugby game for the Crusaders Playing a long side his former Welsh and Scarlets team mate Johnny McNicoll.Johnny has been playing great, back in a Crusaders jersey.The attack has strengthened big time. Also looking forward to David Havili at 10. David is a class act, it also allows Dallas McLeod to remain at 12. A good thing.
1 Go to commentsIf he had stopped insisting on playing in the backrow, instead of wing, where everyone told him he should, he would have been a Bok years ago….
11 Go to comments‘Salads don’t win scrums’ 😂 I love that.
19 Go to commentsCan’t wait for the article that talks about misogyny in Ireland. Somehow.
16 Go to commentsI would like to see a rule change, when the attacking team is held up over the try line, by allowing the defensive team to restart a goal line drop out releases the pressure for the defensive team, but what if the attacking team had to restart a tap 5m out from the defensive team it gives the attacking team to apply more pressure, there are endless options for the attacking side and it will keep the fans in suspence.
2 Go to commentsLess modern South African males predictably triggered.
16 Go to commentsMy heart is with Quins, but the head is convinced Toulouse have too much. Ntamack is back, his timing and wisdom has been missed.
1 Go to commentsWow, what a starting line up for the Sharks) Tasty up front,kremer vs Tshituka or venter …fiery ,,Lavannini ,,will he knobble etzebeth? Biggest game for belleau?
1 Go to commentsIt was rubbish to watch, Blues weren’t even present. Did what they had to do, nothing more. Should be better next week against canes.
1 Go to commentsI’ve just noticed that this match has an all-French refereeing team. Surely a game like this ought to have a neutral ref? Although looking at the BBC preview of the Saints game, Raynal is also down as reffing that - so there may be some confusion about who is reffing what.
1 Go to commentsIf Havili can play anywhere in the back line, why not first 5. #10.
11 Go to commentsThe dressing room had already left for their summer break before they ran out in Dublin that year, and that’s on the coach. Franco Smith has undoubtedly made progress, particularly their maul, developing squad players and increasing squad depth. And against a very tight budget too. That said they were too lightweight last year and got found out against both Toulon and Munster in consecutive games. Better this season so far but they’ve developed something of a slow start habit occasionally, most notably losing at home to Northampton who played them at their own game. Play offs will ultimately show whether there has been tangible progress on last year, or not…!
2 Go to commentsAustralian Rugby has been a disaster, by not incorporating learning from previous successful campaigns. QLD Reds 2011 - Waratahs 2014. Players, coaches and administrators appoint there representatives for scheduled meetings, organisation’s agreement’s assessments and correspondence. This why a unified Rugby Union under one entity works. Every Rugby nation has taken that path. Was most difficult in the Northern hemisphere with over 100 years of club rugby before the game become professional. Took a lot of humility for those unions to eventually work together.
7 Go to commentsThough Wilson’s sacking was pretty brutal, it wasn’t just down to that Leinster game; Glasgow had a lot of 2nd half collapses that season, in the URC and Europe, and only just scraped into the playoffs. Franco Smith has definitely been an improvement, some players are delivering far more than they did under Wilson.
2 Go to commentsjesus - that front 5!
1 Go to commentsShould be an absolute cracker of a game! Will be great to see DuPont & Ntamack in tandem once again🔥
1 Go to commentsBest team ever…. To have played? These guys are still pressure chokers. Came nowhere when it counted. What a joke
84 Go to commentsMusk defends anonymous terrorism, fascism, threats against individuals and children etc etc But a Rugby club account….lock ‘em up!!!
2 Go to commentsActually the era defining moment came a few years earlier. February 2002 to be precise, when Michael D Higgins as finance minister at the time introduced his sports persons tax relief bill to the dial. As the politicians of the day stated “It seems to be another daft K Club frolic born in Kildare amongst the well-paid professional jockeys with whom the Minister plays golf” and that the scheme represented “a savage uncaring vision of Ireland and one that should be condemned”. The irfu and Leinster would be nowhere near the position they are in today without this key component of the finances.
5 Go to commentsIt is crystal clear that people who make such threats on line should be tried and imprisoned. Those with responsibility in social media companies who don’t facilitate this should be convicted. In real life, I have free speech to approach someone like Reinach and verbally threaten him. I am risking a conviction or a slap but I could do it. In the old days, If someone anonymously threatened someone by letter the police would ask and use evidence from the postal system. Unlike the Post, social media companies have complete instant and legal access to the content in social media. They make money from the data, billions. Yet, they turn a blind eye to terrorism, Nazi-ism and industrial levels of threats against individuals including their address and childrens schools being published online all from ananoymous accounts not real people. They claim free speech. Free speech for anonymous trolls/voilent thugs threatening people under false names? The fault is with the perps but also social media companies who think anonymous personas posting death threats constitutes free speech.
2 Go to comments