England’s 43-42 Six Nations win<\/a> over the same opponents in April with a leg injury.<\/p>\nElsewhere, Zoe Harrison retains her spot at fly-half from last weekend’s 97-7 thrashing of Spain.<\/p>\n
There are 11 changes to the starting line-up from that victory with Abby Dow coming onto the wing and Hannah Botterman, Amy Cokayne and Maud Muir in the front row.<\/p>\n
Captain Zoe Aldcroft returns at blind-side flanker with Sadia Kabeya and Alex Matthews completing the back row.<\/p>\n
“Ellie is like the 11 others who are starting for the first time, she is keen as mustard,” said head coach John Mitchell.<\/p>\n
Kildunne, 25, has become perhaps the foremost face of the Rugby World Cup after a 2024 stellar campaign that included 14 tries in nine Tests and being named as the world’s best 15s player.<\/p>\n
Mitchell says she can deal with the scrutiny.<\/p>\n
“All she can do is be where her feet are,” he added. “Our culture focuses on that.<\/p>\n
“You can’t control what is ahead of you, you can’t control what you have left behind, but you can control where your feet are.<\/p>\n
“Ultimately that is about focus.”<\/p>\n
Wing Claudia Moloney-MacDonald and back Holly Aitchison, contenders for starting spots in a first-choice backline, are still managing injuries. <\/p>\n
Emily Scarratt, who will be taking part in a fifth Rugby World Cup, is unavailable as she continues her recovery from a head injury.<\/p>\n
The Red Roses’ World Cup campaign begins against the United States on Friday 22 August.<\/p>\n
Mitchell is more concerned about England’s performance about France than maintaining a winning run that stands at 26 matches and nearly three years.<\/p>\n
“We always respect France, but the scoreboard doesn’t matter this week, the performance does,” he said.<\/p>\n
“There will be some aspects of this performance that we can learn from and get better.”<\/p>\n
England: Kildunne; Dow, Jones, Heard, Breach; Harrison, Hunt; Botterman, Cokayne, Muir, Talling, Ward, Aldcroft, Kabeya, Matthews<\/p>\n
Replacements: Atkin-Davies, Clifford, Bern, Galligan, Feaunati, L Packer, Rowland, Sing<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"World player of the year Ellie Kildunne has been named in a near full-strength team as England take…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50156,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-50155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50155","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=50155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50155\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}