Women"s Rugby World Cup: England crush Samoa 65-3 in opening match of ...

“We’ve been working for this for the last seven months and we were itching to

get on the pitch and play,” said Sarah Hunter, the England No 8.

“It was a bit of a relief that we have got the first game under way and got

this World Cup off to a good start.

“We executed some of the things we have been working on. We wanted to play

with width and tempo but Samoa really put the pressure on us which meant our

execution let us down at times.

“Despite going down to 14 they really made us work for the win. We’ll

look to review to see how we can be more clinical against Spain on Tuesday.”

Samoa managed to shake England with some massive hits in the opening

exchanges, with Hunt fortunate to avoid serious injury after being upended

and spun like a cartwheel.

England then took control with two tries by Merchant in as many minutes, with

Scarratt involved in the first and Merchant’s own break creating the second.

The first involved a sumptuous off-load from Scarratt in midfield before

Merchant rounded three defenders, showing great strength and balance to

remain in play and touch down.

Samoa’s Bella Milo was just short with a penalty attempt before great hands by

Scarratt created a third try for England from a turn-over, with new cap

Thompson showing great speed to finish from 65 metres.

The bonus point for England was secured by dint of some more accurate passing,

with Thompson crossing for her second try.

From the restart Hunt scored a remarkable solo try, taking a quickly-taken

penalty before weaving through the Samoan defence to round off a hugely

impressive first half.

Samoa took the game to England at the start of the second half but went down

to 13 after No 8 Helen Collins was shown a yellow card for diving over the

top of a ruck and moments later a clever dummy enabled Hunt to glide over

for her second try.

The pace of Danielle Waterman and Thompson then provided the momentum for the

try of the match, with the ball going through a dozen set of hands before

being finished by Kay Wilson.

Further tries by La Toya Mason, Scarratt and Wilson completed the victory.

Article source: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/06/11/rugby-england-marler-idUKL4N0OS0UL20140611

Women"s Rugby World Cup: England crush Samoa 65-3 in opening match of ...