John Mitchell has learned from his experience of the men’s 2019 Rugby World Cup final and insists he has not made the same mistakes as coach of England’s women as they target the victory over Canada that will deliver Rugby World Cup glory.
Mitchell admits that England’s men failed to “handle the emotional tank well” in 2019 when he was their defence coach. In stark contrast, his Red Roses finalists “have managed it”, he says as the head coach looks forward to Saturday’s showpiece at a sold-out Twickenham. Mitchell was one of Eddie Jones’s assistants when they lost to South Africa in Japan after beating New Zealand in the semi-final.
“I still look back on 2019 and the semi-final was a huge performance and I think we sometimes as coaches don’t recognise the emotional tank plus the physical tank that is emptied in such occasions,” said Mitchell. “We possibly in 2019 didn’t deal with the emotional tank, refill it well enough.
“The way we have prepared this week is we have made sure we [were off for] a couple of days after the semi-final performance [against France] to be able to come in and get focused on the plan we need to execute on the weekend. What has been really good about this tournament is to create the normal and easy because it is at home.
“Once you get into the tournament it doesn’t allow for that, the normal and easy comes through opportunities and pockets of where you can get home. I think we have done that well, which has allowed the girls and staff to come back in to get after their next week.”
England’s matchday 23 for the final is unchanged from the team that beat France last Saturday. Mitchell added that the most difficult part of coaching has come with managing players across a squad. “We have just been fortunate for the girls to buy into the three roles. It is the hardest challenge in any team, the non-playing members, to get them to understand how they can make the team stronger.
“We have done a lot of work in that area, I don’t think you get it right all the time, I am not saying we get it right. I really just don’t know what the solution is but we have been able to make it work for ourselves to this point.”
England are on a 32-game winning run but the coach does not believe fans have seen the best of them yet. “There’s definitely more in this team,” Mitchell said. “We always ask more of ourselves. We probably don’t even know what that ceiling is, it’s probably wrong of us to set a limit. So these girls are driven, they want to get better.
“The difference this time you’ve got one and two in the world in the final, which is so good for the game. And it’ll require an 80-minute performance which we will have to earn.”
The captain, Zoe Aldcroft, was involved in the last World Cup final, which England lost 34-31 to New Zealand but this time the Red Roses are not “making it bigger than it already is”. She added: “Just as a group we are so excited to get out there. We have been working on this now for three years and it is our time now, we really feel like that.
“We’re so excited to experience it. It’s something that we’ve never experienced but we’ve wanted for so long. I think just the momentum and the impact that we have had on fans throughout the tournament from the start in Sunderland to coming now into Twickenham, it’s just going to be so exciting to see where we have pushed women’s rugby to. We are just excited for this new era of women’s rugby on Saturday.”
England Kildunne; Dow, Jones, Heard, Breach; Harrison, Hunt; Botterman, Cokayne, Muir, Talling, Ward, Aldcroft, Kabeya, Matthews. Replacements Atkin-Davies, Clifford, Bern, Galligan, Feaunati, L Packer, Aitchison, Rowland.
