England defender Lucy Bronze is drawing on the experience of her first World Cup eight years ago to allay fears that the Lionesses did not play like favourites in their 1-0 opening victory against Haiti in Brisbane.
That win, sealed by Georgia Stanway’s twice-taken penalty against a side 49 places below England in the FIFA rankings, extended the Lionesses’ streak without a goal from open play to three games, including their 0-0 behind-closed-doors pre-tournament training match with Canada.
Bronze made her World Cup debut at the 2015 tournament, where England fell to France in their opener but ultimately finished up with the third-place medal for their best-ever finish in a global showpiece.
She said: “Well, in my first World Cup we lost the first game and ended finishing third. There’s only so much you can take from the game. The most important thing is it gives us momentum but it’s better than having to chase points and we get to focus on the next two games.
“We’re playing against players we’ve never played before. It takes a little while to get into those games. Once we got going you saw England coming back to life again. We need to do that more for longer.”
Bronze had no doubt Stanway would step up to the spot twice on Saturday, after her initial penalty was saved by Haiti’s 5ft 4in goalkeeper Kerly Theus.
That would have left Stanway with a career record of six penalties scored and two missed, but she was given another chance after the referee ruled Theus had come off her line.
Bronze had full faith in Stanway to put the ball in the back of the net with her second opportunity, which the Bayern Munich midfielder did handily.
She said: “I don’t think anyone doubted that Georgia would take it. We just picked it up and gave it to her. She doesn’t need any encouragement to do that. Georgia is not the type of player that needs telling what to do or is lacking confidence. We all knew that a second chance was enough for her to bury it.”
England, who have now checked into their World Cup base on the New South Wales’ Central Coast, next face world number 13 Denmark on Friday in Sydney before taking on 14th-placed China in Adelaide to conclude the group stage, with the top two teams advancing to the last 16.
Bronze’s team-mate Alessia Russo, who on Saturday was favoured for the centre-forward role by Sarina Wiegman over Women’s Super League Golden Boot winner Rachel Daly, was one of the only England players to admit their first half against Haiti looked a bit rusty.
She said: “Yeah, I think so. Us as players are the first to recognise that. We’ll be back to training this week and training hard to push on now but tournaments are always about winning and that’s the most important thing.
“I don’t think I ever worry about goals and winning with this team. I think we’ve got a very special talented squad and I know that people show up at the right times.
“The first game, we’ve been building up to it for a long time. It’s done now, three points under the belt. Now we really push on. Moments were good and we’ll reflect on it, we’ll analyse and we’ll be ready for Denmark.”
