England’s world player of the year, Ellie Kildunne, is expected to be ready to play against France in the Women’s Rugby World Cup semi‑final against France on Saturday after missing the 40-8 quarter-final win against Scotland on Sunday.

The full-back did not play against Scotland because of concussion protocols, but afterwards the Red Roses head coach, John Mitchell, said: “We have a clean bill of health I think. Ellie is back running, back into collision work and she is going good.”

Kildunne sustained a head injury in England’s final pool match against Australia and was taken off with concussion symptoms. That meant she has had to go through a mandatory 12-day stand-down period.

England most recently thrashed France 40-6 in a World Cup warmup match last month, but only edged a much closer match, 43-42, in the Six Nations this year.

On Sunday France reached the World Cup semi-finals after pipping Ireland 18-13 in their last-eight clash – and Mitchell said the match gave him “a good look at old foes”.

The head coach said: “We respect them hugely and they got themselves out of a very difficult situation today in difficult conditions as well. They’ll be energetic for us. They will definitely be better for us, there’s no doubt about that. We are also looking forward to them as well.”

Mitchell was not happy with all of the calls made by the officials on Sunday. “We found weakness and cynical actions in their set piece and we went for the jugular there … Probably need to talk to World Rugby about understanding when teams are so cynical why we don’t get awarded penalty tries sometimes.”

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When asked about the specific cynical play he was referring to, he said: “Double sacking in a lineout that should be a single sacking and there was repeated infringement at scrum time. The whole second half slowed down at scrum time. Look how dominant we were at scrum time, maul and scrum was superior so we should be rewarded for that.”