‘Part of our DNA’ – inside the Red Roses’ try-machine driving maul

Women’s Rugby World Cup quarter-final: England v Scotland

Venue: Ashton Gate, Bristol Date: Sunday 14 September Kick-off: 16:00 BST

If you are in the front few rows of the crowd, or listening closely to the referee’s microphone, you can hear the shout.

“Three metres to go, two metres to go, one metre…”

It is the sound of England scrum-half Natasha Hunt tracking a rumbling mass of Red Roses forwards, giving them an estimated time of arrival to the tryline.

It is the countdown for one of England’s most reliable attacking launchpads – the driven line-out.

In England’s final World Cup warm-up against France, the Red Roses silenced a buoyant crowd in Mont-de-Marsan, crossing four times through the catch-and-drive tactic.

It delivered the first and final tries in their tournament opener against the United States, with Sadia Kabeya and Lark Atkin-Davies crossing.

Samoa and Australia also succumbed to the steamroller.

As England enter the knockout stages with Sunday’s quarter-final against Scotland, as the matches get tighter, it is a weapon they may reach for even more regularly.

In top-tier matches since the last Women’s World Cup, England have scored an average of 1.04 tries a game via their driven maul, well clear of the rest of the world.

“The girls are just very good at it,” says England forwards coach Louis Deacon, with a bit of understatement.

Earlier this summer, football’s Lionesses adopted a ‘proper English’ mindset, invoking the qualities of fight and resilience on their way to European Championship glory.

Deacon and Sarah Hunter, a key part of the England pack until she retired in March 2023 and now defence coach, believe there is something similar in England’s driven line-out expertise.

“We’re English, we love set-piece and those sort of areas of the game,” said Deacon.

“It’s brilliant that it’s part of our DNA,” added Hunter.

Hooker Atkin-Davies won the first of her 71 caps more than a decade ago.

“I have scored quite a lot of tries off the back of a maul,” she says.

“My first role though, the most important thing, it to throw the ball accurately [into the initial line-out].

“As a hooker you have quite a habitual process – you will see I spin the ball a lot in my hands before the throw, that is part of my process.

“Then I join the back of the maul and, first and foremost, push as hard as I can.

“Depending on the set-up of the opposition, we might be looking to twist and find a weakness, but mostly it is about making sure we are tight and going forward.

“The girls in the front of the maul do a lot of the work, while at the back, our variety means sometimes we have a flanker on the ball, sometimes a hooker.”

Asked about the number of different variations for driven line-outs England have in their arsenal, Deacon replies coyly “a lot”.

His team revealed one in the win over the United States. With 50 minutes gone and the Red Roses 40-7 up, England front jumper Zoe Aldcroft caught a line-out eight metres out from the American line.

As the USA braced themselves for a shove, Kabeya and second row Morweena Talling instead peeled round into the narrow blind-side channel, linking up with hooker Amy Cokayne, who went in at the corner.

Those trick plays are essential. For England’s strength can, conversely, also be a weakness.

Such is their forward power and the usual slickness of their line-out, that the Red Roses have previously leaned on the line-out drive too heavily.

In the last play of the previous Rugby World Cup final in 2022, England, trailing New Zealand by three points, had a line-out five metres out from the Black Ferns line.

Since then, under new head coach John Mitchell, England have attempted to add more dimensions. The hope is now they can as easily cut teams open on the opposite wing, as bust through the front door.

“In the past it’s probably an area that we probably went to too much,” said Deacon.

“When we look back to the last World Cup, people were questioning ‘can England only play it one way?’

“There’s a lot more variation in our game now. I think over the past two years or so, we’ve grown our game. We can play more than one way, we can play four different ways if we want to.

“You don’t want to be a one-trick pony, certainly if you want to be successful.”