The television cameras were spoilt for choice.<\/p>\n
During injury hold-ups and TMO deliberations \u2013 and there were plenty \u2013 they could swivel into the stands to pick out a variety of famous faces.<\/p>\n
Catherine, Princess of Wales, sitting between Red Roses Zoe Aldcroft and Marlie Packer, joined in a Mexican Wave.<\/p>\n
England hooker Jamie George, who has previously trained with his women’s counterparts, chatted away with former wing and ever-present pundit Ugo Monye.<\/p>\n
The Rugby Football Union’s Bill Sweeney, who survived an attempt to oust him from his chief executive post earlier this year, enjoyed an afternoon in the comfy seats.<\/p>\n
But the most telling cut-aways came in the 21st and 27th minutes.<\/p>\n
The first shot featured a grim-faced John Mitchell. The England coach had just watched England finally fire up their driving maul, shove Australia into reverse and plough over the line.<\/p>\n
Only for hooker Amy Cokayne to spill forward as she attempted to ground the ball.<\/p>\n
When the camera panned to his Australia counterpart Jo Yapp shortly after, they caught her quick grin.<\/p>\n
Australia scrum-half Samantha Wood had just rifled a superb 50:22 into England’s red zone.<\/p>\n
The Wallaroos were ahead 7-5 on the scoreboard at that point. The danger of them being edged out of the quarter-finals by the United States was receding fast. The odds on an outrageous upset were also coming in.<\/p>\n
Australia and Yapp didn’t hit that jackpot in the end.<\/p>\n
England ended up 40-point winners. They claimed their 30th straight victory. They made the last eight and are three matches from the giddiest glory.<\/p>\n
Mitchell’s side came up with the right numbers but the coach will mark them down for failing to show their best in their working.<\/p>\n
After a 92-3 hammering of Samoa, England were unsettled by Australia’s intensity and refusal to roll over.<\/p>\n
The Wallaroos came with brain as well as brawn, poking holes with kicks in behind England’s defence.<\/p>\n
They found space, bought territory and unsettled the hosts’ back three.<\/p>\n
Canada, New Zealand and France, never mind England’s last-eight opponents Scotland, will have taken note.<\/p>\n
Under pressure, England went to their trump card.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The television cameras were spoilt for choice. During injury hold-ups and TMO deliberations \u2013 and there were plenty…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4409,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-4408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4408\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}