STUART BARROW felt England’s performance in their 70-6 victory over Wales marked a “successful” start to their World Cup campaign.
Connie Boyd and Anna Davies scored hat-tricks in the win at Perth’s HBF Park and Isabel Rowe and Amelia Brown were at the double, with Georgia Wilson, Hollie-Mae Dodd and Jasmin Strange on the scoresheet as well.
Barrow was pleased by the way his side rose to the occasion of being heavy favourites heading into the fixture.
“It’s been a really successful afternoon – you want to get off to a good start,” he said.
“Training has been really good all week. We’ve brought new people into the group, and the way they’ve come together has been really exceptional.
“We still only completed at less than 60 percent today and came up with 16 handling errors, but on the back of that you’ve got to defend, and I think our defence was really connected today – so that’s a positive, but there’s some easy fixes there to get better.
“It brings a different type of pressure today because we were expected to win. Before the game, you can be a little bit anxious about how you turn the scoreboard over because we’re expected to do that, but we focused on it being about us and our performance.”
Wales head coach Tom Brindle said he won’t let the scoreline cloud his side’s achievement of making it to the World Cup.
“We went through our values in our first-ever international Test six years ago, and they’re still true,” he said.
“We talked about competing, and we competed there, so I’m proud of that.
“Emotions are important, so we need to embrace both sides of that. We’ll be disappointed in some areas, but pride will come through as well.”
