STUART BARROW is sure England’s youngsters will learn some important lessons from their 78-0 defeat to Australia in Perth.
The reigning champions were dominant at HBF Park on Saturday, with Jaime Chapman, Jocelyn Kelleher, Isabelle Kelly and Abbi Church each scoring two tries among the Jillaroos’ total of 15.
England now need to beat Samoa in their final group game to progress to the World Cup semi-finals.
“We’ve just talked about the build-up to this, and what we have been doing really well in training – we can’t forget that because of this; we’ve got to remember some of that stuff,” Barrow said.
“We talked about our effort areas and how we continued to turn up for each other, and that’ll stand us in good stead in the future.
“We got blown away by an excellent team, who are one of the best teams across the sporting world. You want to go in there and compete with them, but they were too good and too strong.
“We’ve got to stick to our processes, get back on the horse, and get ready for another game next week.
“A couple of the young girls hadn’t played in a game as hard and as quick; they don’t face that every week so it can be a shock to the system.
“They’ll learn from it, and hopefully they’ll only get better as they get older and we go towards the next World Cup.”
Australia coach Jess Skinner states she was cautious of an England reaction on the back of the Jillaroos’ 90-4 win in Vegas back in 2025.
“We knew they would come out fighting because they wanted to get some pride back in their jersey,” she said.
“We didn’t want to go in thinking we would get the same result, it was more about stopping their attacking threat and how to move their defence.”
