'A lot of tears' after England women exit Rugby League World Cup but coach makes 'better for it' pledge
Coach Stuart Barrow admitted there were “a lot of tears in the changing room” after England were dumped out of the World Cup by Samoa today (Friday).
The 24-6 defeat in Wollongong sent Samoa through to next weekend’s semi-finals while England will be on a flight home tomorrow. Having kicked off the tournament with a 70-6 drubbing of Wales, they were out-classed 78-0 by Australia and Samoa proved too powerful after leading 12-0 at half-time.
“We knew what to expect,” Barrow said. “We knew it was going to be physical and they were going to roll us down the middle. We trained all week at trying to handle that and I think in the first half we got to grips with it a bit, but we just couldn’t get out of our own half.
“We were up against the wind and a couple of kicks that went out on the full didn’t help us, so we hardly had any good ball in the first half. That takes a lot of juice out of your tank, but I thought we regrouped at half-time and in the second half I thought we looked like we could play a bit, but we bombed some chances there as well.”
Leeds Rhinos’ Evie Cousins scored England’s only try, playing alongside clubmates Connie Boyd, Keara Bennett and Lucy Murray. Barrow feels it was the sort of fixture England need to close the gap on southern hemisphere nations.
He insisted: “I thought it was a good game and a good one for England to be in because we’ve got a problem at the moment where we play France or Wales. No disrespect to them, but we win those and then we play Jillaroos [Australia] where we lose heavily.
“So this was a nice game to be in, where it’s competitive all the way. The more we have of those, it will help us.
“We had a very young group, average age of 21-22 and they’ll learn from this. A lot of those players will go on in four years’ time and be better for this experience. That’s a good place to leave it, but we are sad to be going home tomorrow.”