England coach Mitchell calls for World Rugby clarification over cynical play

BRISTOL, England — John Mitchell has called for clarification from World Rugby over cynical play as he felt his team should have forced penalty tries against Scotland in their Women’s World Cup quarterfinal win on Sunday in Bristol.

England ran out comfortable 40-8 winners against Scotland, to tee up a semifinal with France next Saturday.

The Red Roses’ pack was outstanding as it helped them through a tricky tie in dreadful conditions.

But Mitchell felt his team should have been rewarded with penalty tries for what he felt was dominance from their pack and in the scrum.

“We dominated territory and built pressure on them,” Mitchell said.

“We found weakness and cynical actions in their set-piece and we went for the jugular there, we probably left a little bit out there as well.

“We need to talk to World Rugby about understanding when teams are so cynical why aren’t we don’t get awarded penalty tries sometimes.”

When pushed on where exactly he felt his team should be rewarded, Mitchell said: “There was double sacking in the line-out, there should be single sacking, and there was repeated infringement at scrum time.

“The whole second half slowed down at scrum time. The game deserves better than that — look how dominant we were at scrum time, our maul and scrum was superior and we should be rewarded for that.”

Mitchell was delighted with the team’s showing, as they crossed for six tries. “I thought it was a terrific performance in very difficult conditions,” he said.

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“We kept them in their own half and we built pressure frequently through our set-piece, that’s where we thought we could break them. There was a lot of repeated infringement towards the end so I’m not sure why penalty tries weren’t awarded.

“The pressure by the team was superb. The only little glitch was conceding the line-break late in the game, which is something I don’t really enjoy.”

England are overwhelming favourites for the tournament, but are taking it one step at a time. “We’re going to keep where our feet are,” captain Zoe Aldcroft said. “We love preparing well so we’ll make sure we get a good training week in to put ourselves in the best place heading into the semi-final against France.

“We’ve got a squad of 32 girls and every single one of them is world class so it’s great competition and it raises our training level.”