Red Roses retain WXV 1 title with Vancouver victory

13 Oct 2024 | 5 min | 2

Red Roses retain WXV 1 title with Vancouver victory

The Red Roses ran out 12-21 winners against hosts Canada at BC Place.

Canada struck first through Justine Pelletier inside the opening four minutes, after 10 phases of marshalling her pack toward the whitewash the scrum half dummied and darted, surging over the line for the game's first score for a 5-0 lead.

Not to be outdone, the Red Roses hit back just five minutes later. From the base of a 10-metre attacking scrum, Alex Matthews picked from the base and accelerated down the blindside, but was brought down just shy of the line.

Quick ball was recycled and Maud Muir came steaming onto the Natasha Hunt pass to claim her fifth Test try. Helena Rowland's conversion was all that separated the sides come half time.

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Ten minutes into the resumption the hosts retook the lead thanks to Alexandra Tessier, who converted her own effort to make it 12-7.

Bo Westcombe-Evans received a yellow card on the hour mark, and it looked like Canada could capitalise on the extra player advantage, but the English defence held firm and it was replacement prop Sarah Bern - only on the field 15 minutes - who shifted the momentum of the match by powering over for the Red Roses' second try. Helena Rowland's conversion edged them ahead 12-14.

Zoe Aldcroft finished off the match in style on the 80-minute mark, going over from close range under the sticks, confirming a famous win and back-to-back WXV 1 titles for John Mitchell's charges.

England have now won 33 of their previous 37 Test matches against Canada, including each of their last 13 in a row. The Red Roses have also been victorious in 50 of their last 51 Test matches.

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John Mitchell: "We thought this game was going to take 80 minutes, and I’m not often right but that’s a testament to Canada - they are a good side with good athletes.

"They beat us to the race early in the match. I think we won ugly tonight, but sometimes you have to do that; it was a proper Test match. We will take a lot of good from this.

"If you want to win competitions you need to be really good defensively. We hung tough and eventually we broke them because we went longer than them. But we have to continue to keep learning and get better. Tactically we will evolve as well.

"They don’t know how to give up. I asked them to fight, they knew they were in an arm wrestle. They are a calm group and love solving problems."

Marlie Packer: "The girls have been awesome running into this tournament, we said we wanted to come and attack this tournament - it wasn’t about retaining the title it was about winning it and that is what we done. There were times we really had to dig deep but we showed character as a squad.

"Today was a really tough battle set piece wise. Scrum time we worked really hard. Defensively we were outstanding. We need to come away from this tournament and up it a notch.

"We knew tactically what we wanted to get after in that second half - both the backs and the forwards really bought into that and then it was about who was going to inspire and show why we are number one in the world."