England are on course for another grand slam. In miserable conditions at the Stoop they ran in eight tries against a Wales side every bit as outclassed as they had been in losing 63-0 in Cardiff last season.
England played with ambition in the driving rain with their big, physical back row – Poppy Cleall, Marlie Packer and Sarah Hunter, their captain – dominant. Wales were obliterated at the scrums and left clutching at air in the lineouts and for their No 8, Sioned Harries, who led the teams out on her 50th cap, it was not an afternoon to remember.
The match did end memorably for the England centre, Ellie Kildunne, at 18 the rising star of her team. She took a pass from Danielle Waterman inside her own half and scored her second try, and the best of the game, with a burst of acceleration and a weaving run.
Women’s Six Nations: England not taking Wales lightly
The game could hardly have started worse for Wales with their centre Kerin Lake leaving the field holding her left arm after four minutes. Life became more painful when Cleall crashed over for England’s first try from a lineout drive a couple of minutes later.
Abigail Dow, England’s right-wing, who had earlier been denied a try by Jess Kavanagh-Williams’s brilliant tackle, then took her chance in the same corner. The scrum-half, Leanne Riley, scored her first England try and Wales were on the ropes with a quarter of the game gone.
England secured a bonus point on the half-hour when Kildunne took advantage of weak tackling to run in a fourth try. Packer then emerged from beneath a pile of bodies from another driving maul from a lineout just after the break and Wales were in such disarray they took off their fly-half, Robyn Wilkins, whose life had been made so uncomfortable by that rampaging back row.
Katy Daley-McLean’s clever chip through gave Rachael Burford the chance to score a sixth try by the posts as the drizzle came down and the handling errors by both sides increased. Just as they had last Friday in Italy, England finished strongly. Before Kildunne’s gloss finish Hunter picked up from the back of a buckling Welsh scrum and Cleall scored her second in the corner.
Daley-McLean converted six of the tries and Wales’s agony was summed up when their replacement prop, Cerys Hale, twisted her left knee in a tackle and had to be helped from the field.
“We probably left a lot of tries out there and there is a lot to work on but our defence was phenomenal,” said Hunter.