A big part of this England team is its togetherness – and that perhaps comes from the players’ teenage days.<\/p>\n
Several of the squad, including Kildunne and captain Zoe Aldcroft, attended ‘Block 16’ – part of the student accommodation at Hartpury University and College – on their way to becoming international regulars.<\/p>\n
The women’s rugby academy is a talent factory, taking in 16-year-olds from around the country and turning out Red Roses, creating a squad bonded by their history.<\/p>\n
“The environment is incredible,” said Kildunne. “We back each other and there is a bond in the team like no environment or team I’ve ever been a part of. <\/p>\n
“There is no-one else I would rather take the pitch with than this England team. <\/p>\n
“We have just got to back ourselves, trust the process that we have been on and trust that when that whistle goes, whatever is going to happen is going to happen.”<\/p>\n
A try in each half from Kildunne helped England survive a scare in the semi-final.<\/p>\n
On both occasions, the full-back sliced her way through the French defence and was able to dive over.<\/p>\n
Her explanation? Avoiding the opposition at all costs. <\/p>\n
“There is no secret in being in a good team. Also, I do not like being tackled. So I run away from people,” she said.<\/p>\n
“I am part of a very, very good team and it’s people who put me in gaps. If the gap is not there, I’ll put someone else into it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A big part of this England team is its togetherness – and that perhaps comes from the players’…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":151997,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-151996","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151996","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=151996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151996\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}