Watch the 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup live and on-demand via Stan Sport.<\/a><\/p>\nBut England ran in four tries after the break, including a superb solo score from Kildunne, the reigning World Player of the Year, whose brilliant cross-field sprint from just inside the French half saw her evade several defenders.<\/p>\n
“She was pretty special today wasn’t she?” said Mitchell of Kildunne after England reached their seventh successive World Cup final. “If she gets a bit of space, she is phenomenal, isn’t she?”<\/p>\n
England had swept all before them on their way to the last four, with this latest success extending their world record of consecutive wins to 32.<\/p>\n
But England, unbeaten since losing the 2022 World Cup final to New Zealand, were pushed hard in the opening 40 minutes before recording their 17th successive victory over France.<\/p>\n
It was arguably just what Mitchell’s world number-one ranked team needed ahead of a final against second-placed Canada, who ended double-defending champions New Zealand’s 11-year unbeaten run at the World Cup with an emphatic 34-19 win in Friday’s first semi-final in Bristol, southwest England.<\/p>\n
“I knew they (France) were going to come at us,” said Mitchell. “We just had to win, fight our way out of it. We were nice and calm at half-time.”<\/p>\n
England have not won the World Cup since 2014, when they beat Canada in a Paris final.<\/p>\n
– ‘Courage and heart –<\/p>\n
Asked if he was glad England had been given a stern test ahead of a final in front of an already sold-out crowd of over 82,000 at Twickenham, Mitchell replied: “It will do us a lot of good, that, without a doubt.<\/p>\n
“Our girls are so driven to be better,” added Mitchell, a former coach of his native New Zealand’s men’s All Blacks.<\/p>\n
“To get yourself out of a difficult performance like tonight is a credit to them… There was some courage and a lot of heart shown there.”<\/p>\n
Looking ahead to the Canada match, he said: “Two really good sides in the final, number one in the world and number two and they both deserve to be there. It’s awesome for the game.”<\/p>\n
France have now lost all nine of their Women’s World Cup semi-finals, with co-head coach David Ortiz saying: “We knew we could have a big fight against England, we knew we could have a big arm-wrestle against them. In the end they were very strong.”<\/p>\n
Les Bleues captain Marine Menager added: “Every opportunity they had, they scored tries, so it’s very hard to play against them. Congratulations to them.”<\/p>\n
France will now face New Zealand at Twickenham in a third-place play-off at Twickenham a week on Saturday that takes place just hours before the final itself<\/p>\n
Despite the disappointment of yet another last-four exit, Ortiz said: “Yes, it is true, we lost again but, again, I think we did really well today.<\/p>\n
“We want to bounce back. There is still a bronze medal to go and get and we are going to focus on that next weekend.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"England coach John Mitchell lauded the “phenomenal” Ellie Kildunne after she marked her return with two tries in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":157585,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,1208,760,15131,85],"class_list":["post-157584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-england","tag-rugby","tag-rugby-world-cup","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157584\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/157585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}