{"id":331612,"date":"2025-08-09T22:24:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-09T22:24:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/331612\/"},"modified":"2025-08-09T22:24:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-09T22:24:10","slug":"france-6-40-england-red-roses-dominate-maul-to-win-final-world-cup-warm-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/331612\/","title":{"rendered":"France 6-40 England: Red Roses dominate maul to win final World Cup warm-up"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mitchell had told his players that the priority in Mont-de-Marsan was performance, rather than extending their winning streak to a 27th match.<\/p>\n

That said, England recording their biggest win over France since a 43-8 win in the 2009 Nations Cup, and their largest margin of victory across their last 30 meetings, will not have gone amiss.<\/p>\n

And his side look relaxed – smiling their way through the national anthem, doing their trademark rodeo celebration following Jones’ try – and confident, executing their game plan where needed and playing to their strengths.<\/p>\n

The clear strength is in the pack.<\/p>\n

Harrison, who retained her spot at fly-half from the 97-7 demolition of Spain<\/a>, kicked for the corner wherever possible. England dominated the line-out, and when it broke into a maul it nearly always led to a try.<\/p>\n

There are still questions to be answered, particularly among the backs. The loose passes seen here may be punished by New Zealand or Canada next month. And there were opportunities for more tries, however knock-ons at inopportune times stopped the scoreline being even more lopsided.<\/p>\n

But this was a showing to demonstrate exactly why England are world number ones and favourites for the World Cup.<\/p>\n

Even with errors, it was far more ruthless than the last meeting with France, when a 24-point lead was squandered to allow Les Bleues to get within a point in a classic that ended 43-42 to Mitchell’s side.<\/p>\n

Here, England were undaunted by a partisan crowd of around 7,000, nor the competitiveness of the hosts which belied the term friendly in France’s only World Cup warm-up game – with captain Manae Feleu sin-binned in the first half amid a ferocious breakdown battle.<\/p>\n

It bodes well for 22 August, when England kick off their home World Cup campaign against the United States at the Stadium of Light in Sunderland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mitchell had told his players that the priority in Mont-de-Marsan was performance, rather than extending their winning streak…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":331613,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5309],"tags":[2000,299,36],"class_list":{"0":"post-331612","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-france"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331612\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/331613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}