Jess Breach said England want to be \u201cthe predator\u201d not other teams\u2019 prey at the Rugby World Cup after she was named to win her 50th cap against Australia in the Red Roses\u2019 final pool game.<\/p>\n
Australia need to beat the World Cup hosts on Saturday or pick up bonus point to secure a quarter-final spot; beyond that it will come down to points difference and on how the earlier USA v Samoa game pans out. Messaging in the England camp this week has been about flipping the script to being viewed as the hunters.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to reverse it,\u201d Breach said. \u201cWe know we get hunted by every team. Every team wants to beat us. We want to turn it around and say we are hunting them. We don\u2019t want to be people\u2019s prey, we want to be the predator and go at them and show what we can really do.\u201d<\/p>\n
The head coach John Mitchell added: \u201cI noticed they [Australia] are talking it up and trying to create the \u2018pressure\u2019 \u2026 but we will be hunting them as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Breach has never lost when playing for England on the previous 49 occasions, something she hails as an \u201cincredible achievement\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery time you put on an England shirt you want to win the game,\u201d she said. \u201cI have been fortunate enough to have potentially 50 caps that are winning. Obviously I was involved when we lost the [2022] final but not in the team. You still have that heartbreak and know what that feels like. It is an incredible achievement to go hopefully 50 caps, no loss.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alex Matthews is one of 12 changes made to England\u2019s starting XV from last Saturday\u2019s 92-3 win over Samoa<\/a> and will captain her country for only the second time in her career \u2013 the previous occasion was against the USA at the 2024 WXV tournament \u2013 despite vice-captain Meg Jones starting at outside centre. Regular captain Zoe Aldcroft is still injured, but is expected to return for the quarter-final, while the lock\u2019s predecessor Marlie Packer is not in the matchday squad.<\/p>\n Quick GuideEngland team to face AustraliaShow<\/p>\n England Kildunne; Dow, Jones, Heard, Breach; Harrison, Hunt; Botterman, Cokayne, Muir, Galligan, Ward, Talling, Kabeya, Matthews (capt)<\/p>\n Replacements Atkin-Davies, Clifford, Bern, Campion, Feaunati, L Packer, Aitchison, Rowland<\/p>\n Thank you for your feedback.<\/p>\n Mitchell said of his decision: \u201cMeg is a brilliant vice-captain. There are no rights to captaincy because you are vice-captain, simple as that. You have got one of the best No 8s in the world arguably and she has demonstrated excellence for a long period of time. I love leaders that the players can follow through their actions.\u201d<\/p>\n Holly Aitchison will potentially make her first appearance of the tournament as she starts among the replacements after missing the opening two games with an ankle injury. If the Sale Sharks player comes off the bench every single player in the Red Roses 32-strong squad would have had tournament minutes before the knockout stage begins.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n The latest rugby union news and analysis, plus all the week’s action reviewed<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Abby Dow comes back in on the other wing to Breach and is one try away from hitting 50 for England, while Ellie Kildunne rounds off the back three.<\/p>\n Alex Matthews (left) will captain England for the second time in her career on Saturday in Brighton. Photograph: Mike Hewitt\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Morwenna Talling moves to blindside flanker with Sadia Kabeya back at openside and Maddie Feaunati on the bench. In the second row the lock pairing is Rosie Galligan and Abbie Ward.<\/p>\n In total, the starting XV has only one different to England\u2019s opener, the enforced absence of Aldcroft. When asked if the first-choice team was nailed on, Mitchell said: \u201cI think we will still be tactically thinking where we can get advantages but, yeah, everything is basically an end point from this point onwards. It\u2019s not about making wholesale changes, it\u2019s about cohesion, it\u2019s about belief that has been built. There is two-and-a-half, three years experience in this group so you have at some point got to put your stamp on it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jess Breach said England want to be \u201cthe predator\u201d not other teams\u2019 prey at the Rugby World Cup…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":114040,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-114039","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114039\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}