The Women’s Six Nations begins with one big question lingering over it: can anyone lay a glove on England? Grand slam champions in 2019, with 45 tries scored and a points difference of 233, Simon Middleton’s team also had the best individual players. The fly-half Katy Daley-Mclean scored the most points and the wing Jessica Breach the most tries (there was no female player of the tournament; that accolade will be introduced for the first time this year).
Since then England have enjoyed a dominant autumn and can also boast they have the world’s best player in their ranks: Emily Scarratt, who received that accolade in November. The strength of the 15-times champions, whose players are full-time professionals unlike most of their competitors, does not bode well for their opponents and some may also say the competition itself. But the ominous news is Middleton is looking only for improvement in 2020.
“Complacency is something that never enters our camp, our mindset,” he says before Sunday’s opening fixture with France. “As coaches we wouldn’t allow it, senior players within the group wouldn’t allow that to happen anyway. I think our biggest challenge is very much: be better than our last performance. Win or lose, as long as we improve our performance, we’re heading in the right direction.”
The strongest competition for the Red Roses is likely to come from the continental mainland. Italy finished a commendable second in last year’s championship while France – who have a number of players on part-time contracts – have the pedigree of champions, if not the form (they lost to England four times last year).
The defending grand slam champions England have included the back-row Harriet Millar-Mills in their 32-player Six Nations squad after Marlie Packer underwent ankle surgery.
Millar-Mills returns to the squad after 22 months out with a knee injury while the Richmond lock Rowena Burnfield is recalled and Vickii Cornborough returns after missing the autumn internationals with a neck injury. Amelia Harper and Morwenna Talling are the two uncapped players in the squad while two long-term absentees, Cath O’Donnell and Lagi Tuima, are ruled out.
England begin their campaign against France in Pau on Sunday.
Backs Breach, Daly-McLean, Dow, Harrison, Hunt, Macdonald, McKenna, Reed, Riley, Scarratt, E Scott, Smith, Thompson, Wood.
Forwards Aldcroft, Beckett, Bern, Botterman, Brown, Burnfield, B Cleall, P Cleall, Cockayne, Cornborough, Davies, Fleetwood, Harper, Hunter, Kerr, Millar-Mills, A Scott, Talling.
As for the home nations, however, almost every team is in some kind of rebuild. Ireland are the most established side and their captain, Ciara Griffin, talks of “getting a unity and a collective performance”. Their ambitions are to bring an attacking style of play to bear – “It’s a real fast-pace game, we want to play exciting rugby,” Griffin says – but also to maintain momentum before the greater priority of ensuring World Cup qualification through the Rugby Europe competition in September. “We know if we can have some good performances in the Six Nations that should roll into our summer,” says their coach, Adam Griggs. “Hopefully it will help us out in the qualifiers.”
Ireland will be joined by Scotland in the qualifiers and their mountain is the biggest of all to climb. The Scots finished with the wooden spoon last year after failing to claim a point. Scotland now have 10 players with central contracts, however, and a new coach in Philip Doyle, the 55-year-old who won the Six Nations with Ireland’s women in 2013. “It’ll take a bit of time and a lot of effort, but I think with this particular squad Scotland could be a force to be reckoned with … in a certain period of time,” Doyle says. “This year it’s just about closing those gaps and getting competitive. Putting Scotland where they really should be, back to where they were.”
Wales, like England, qualify automatically for the World Cup but have had their own restructure – with some resources now shared between the men’s and women’s game. Closing the distance to the English remains key for them too, according to their captain, Siwan Lillicrap. “I think we need to take every game as it comes but we’re not necessarily speaking about winning, we’re speaking about closing the performance gap,” she says. “Every training session we go to is about closing that gap and enhancing our performance. We keep on this path, then the results will look after themselves.”
