WXV Global Series 2026 review: England's Red Roses

England had a mixed bag of results in the WXV Global Series but the team will have learned more from this campaign than it has since their Rugby World Cup final loss in 2022 and it has come at the perfect time.

The Red Roses, who won their eighth consecutive Guinness Women’s Six Nations title in May, did come away with three wins, a draw and two losses but it was those latter results that garnered most attention.

England were unable to beat Canada across three matches with two defeats and a draw with their Women’s Rugby World Cup 2025 final opponents, who were absolutely on the money when coming up against their rivals.

Kévin Rouet’s side had been open about putting everything into wanting to beat England and they achieved that objective but inadvertently gave England their biggest learnings in four years.

That’s because England had not lost since that final in 2022. The head coach John Mitchell said he will learn more from the losses than he had the wins and Abi Burton told RugbyPass that weak elements of a team’s game are magnified after a loss, meaning they will look more in depth at where they can get better and grow. This was the best time for the losses to come too with no trophy on the line.

While there were elements all round to improve for England, there were two particular areas in the games in Ottawa and Toronto where Canada gained huge momentum: Scrappy attack and a malfunctioning lineout. Knock-ons and loose passes accounted for multiple opportunities going begging and Canada had also worked out England’s attacking plans A and B. They wrapped Ellie Kildunne up with multiple tacklers rendering the star full-back out of the game and their high press defence and slowing the ball down at the breakdown made it difficult for England to get front foot ball.

It wasn’t all bad for England. They will know and take heart that they were not blown away by Canada. The first loss was by three points and the second by nine points. Each match was a close encounter and made for thrilling viewing for those watching. That is the other benefit of teams catching the Red Roses up, not only are fans seeing new game winners but they are able to be enthralled by classic Test matches.

WXV Global Series was not all full of losses for England either with wins over Australia, New Zealand and the USA. After the series of matches they are also still world No.1s but not everything has remained the same, there was a shake up in the line-up over the last two matches.

Kildunne’s containment and a drop in form saw her benched with Emma Sing starting at full-back with a change at wing too with Mia Venner starting the final two matches with Claudia Moloney-MacDonald first dropped and then Jess Breach. Sing had solid performances but Venner really marked out a place for herself with impressive outings on both occasions.

There is a lot of time between now and England’s next match at the start of the 2027 Women’s Six Nations in April and so supporters will have to wait to see if they have claimed those starting shirts in the long term. That won’t just depend on the campaign just gone of course, with the players needing to retain form throughout the JAECOO Premiership Women’s Rugby season.

There were also players who maintained great form for England across all six WXV Global Series games, namely Bryony Field, Maddie Feaunati, Zoe Harrison and the captain Meg Jones. Others also had good performances but those four were standouts.

Field in particular was impressive, winning her first cap against Australia in September and claiming a starting shirt for the close clash against the Black Ferns before playing a role in all of the other matches. She will cause Mitchell some selection headaches at hooker, especially now Lark Atkin-Davies is back in the mix after returning to the pitch following the birth of her daughter, Olive.

England ended their WXV Global Series campaign with a victory over the USA so they will be left with a winning feeling before taking to the pitch again. They will also be favourites to win their ninth Women’s Six Nations in a row with the only realistic challengers to the title being France, whose form took a nosedive in October.

While they were missing many of their main stars like Pauline Bourdon Sansus and Manae Feleu for their series in New Zealand, they were beaten repeatedly over three Tests by the Black Ferns. New Zealand won the three games by an aggregate score of 148-31, with the first game 81-12, which doesn’t paint a promising title-winning picture for next year. But they will play England at Allianz Stadium which is where they have come close to beating England in recent years.

So England’s winning domination has been slightly halted this WXV Global Series with their 41-game unbeaten record over. But they have already begun another winning era and fans will have to watch this space for how long that will continue with the knowledge that England will not play Canada or New Zealand until 2028 because of the inaugural women’s British & Irish Lions tour in 2027.