Ultimately, whatever aspirations England had to push the envelope, it made more sense to shove it up the jumper.No team is better suited to the close-quarters combat.Morwenna Talling was named player of the match, but second-row partner Rosie Galligan, crashing across the gain line again and again, can’t have been far behind.Captain Zoe Aldcroft, back for the first time since the tournament opener after a knee injury, put to bed any fitness doubts with a performance of fury and accuracy.Sadia Kabeya topped the game’s tackle count with 20, a remarkable statistic considering England had 55% of possession as well.Maud Muir was immense, while Kelsey Clifford filled in ably for the injured Hannah Botterman at loose-head, bashing over for two tries.Much of the focus in the build-up had been on Helena Rowland.Ellie Kildunne, whose concussion symptoms must have eased judging by the way she was whacking a pitchside drum, has more obvious stardust to her game.The step, the spurt of speed, the top-end pace are matched by few in the game.They make up the highlight-reel content that makes Kildunne a world player of the year.But Rowland has subtler gifts.The way she cut in late on one first-half pass from Jones, taking her past Scotland’s Rhona Lloyd and Chloe Rollie before they had realised where they were, was a prime example.She is also alert in the backfield and, in contrast to last week where Australia poked holes with kicks, Rowland ably fielded whatever Loughborough Lightning team-mate Helen Nelson pinged her way.Mitchell enjoyed those small details and his side’s pragmatism.”I thought it was a terrific performance,” he told BBC Sport.”We put them in their own half, we kept them there and we broke them and built pressure on them with set-piece – frequently.”We forced them into a lot of negative situations, they had to hang on as we kept applying pressure. We left a little bit out there, but considering the conditions, it was awesome.”
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England 40-8 Scotland: Red Roses master conditions to reach World Cup semi-final
