{"id":333575,"date":"2025-08-10T16:30:21","date_gmt":"2025-08-10T16:30:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/333575\/"},"modified":"2025-08-10T16:30:21","modified_gmt":"2025-08-10T16:30:21","slug":"england-complete-prep-for-womens-rugby-world-cup-with-win-over-france","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/333575\/","title":{"rendered":"England complete prep for Women\u2019s Rugby World Cup with win over France"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

England ran in six tries as they completed their preparations for the Women\u2019s Rugby World Cup<\/a> with a 40-6 win over France.<\/p>\n

The Red Roses, who kick off their campaign against the United States at Sunderland\u2019s Stadium of Light on Friday, August 22, were made to work hard for a 27th successive victory in Mont-de-Marsan by a French side missing first-choice scrum-half Pauline Bourdon<\/a> Sansus through suspension.<\/p>\n

England\u2019s forward power proved irresistible during the first half as they established a commanding lead, but having seen France all but reel them in before holding on to win their Six Nations<\/a> Grand Slam decider in April 43-42, they headed for the dressing room taking nothing for granted.<\/p>\n

Morwenna Talling provided the finishing touch to a fourth-minute rolling maul after second row partner Abbie Ward<\/a> had secured possession at an early line-out, and hooker Amy Cockayne repeated the dose at the end of a powerful 15th-minute drive with Zoe Harrison<\/a> adding the conversion.<\/p>\n

Handling errors and imprecision cost John Mitchell\u2019s side further tries as the French conceded a series of penalties which eventually saw lock forward Manae Feleu<\/a> yellow-carded, and although Morgane Bourgeois<\/a> reduced the deficit with a penalty in her absence, prop Maud Muir<\/a> touched down from another rolling maul and Harrison added the extras to make it 19-3 at the break.<\/p>\n

Bourgeois kicked a second penalty to capitalise on Teani Feleu\u2019s rampaging early break as the second half got under way, but scrum-half Natasha Hunt\u2019s quick thinking after her pack had forced a scrum penalty sent centre Megan Jones<\/a> over and Harrison obliged once again.<\/p>\n

France started to throw the ball around, with half-backs Carla Arbez<\/a> and Alexandra Chambon<\/a> both making dangerous breaks and as the England scrum came under pressure, the visitors were starved of meaningful possession.<\/p>\n

But catch and drive did the trick once again with six minutes remaining for replacement hooker Lark Atkin-Davies<\/a> to go over, and she added a second three minutes later to allow Harrison to take her tally to 10 points with two more successful kicks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"England ran in six tries as they completed their preparations for the Women\u2019s Rugby World Cup with a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":333576,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5309],"tags":[2000,299,36],"class_list":{"0":"post-333575","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":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115005425150251615","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333575","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=333575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/333576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}