BRIGHTON — England closed out the 2025 Women’s World Cup pool stages with a 47-7 win over Australia but were made to work for their eventual bonus point victory.

The win means the Red Roses will face Scotland in the quarterfinals while the margin of defeat also sees Australia safely through, where they’ll play Canada. Australia’s progression sees the USA bow out of the World Cup with a win, a draw and a defeat to their name.

For England, who are overwhelming favourites to win the whole tournament, this was their first proper test in the World Cup where Australia matched their physicality in the first half, caused the Red Roses all sorts of trouble and forced some uncharacteristic errors. But eventually England came through with a fantastic performance in the second half, where they ended up scoring seven tries overall in front of 30,443 spectators.

But the win came at a cost and England will monitor the fitness of two key players in the coming days. Loose-head Hannah Botterman was forced off with an acute back spasm in the first half, while Ellie Kildunne sustained a knock to the head in the second half.

Australia headed into this match knowing a single point would be enough to book their place in the knockouts. And with a points difference of 74 more than the USA, it would’ve taken a huge loss to have cut short their tournament.

And despite their underdog tag, Australia flew out of the blocks and turned an England lineout in the opening stages, and then scored the first try of the match as hooker Faitala Moleka drove over a rolling lineout. It was the first time England have been behind in this tournament. England responded immediately through Jess Breach – scoring on her 50th cap – but the Red Roses looked sloppy. They made a series of errors, Ellie Kildunne’s usually immaculate handling letting her down, while there were also two forward passes, and they also coughed up a scrum penalty. It’s not the sort of thing we’ve come to expect from the most dominant side in the world at present.

Australia’s brilliant kicking game – forcing two 50:22s in the first half – pinned England back and they got over England’s tryline again after 16 minutes, only for it to be deemed as held up. England thought they scored their second after 20 minutes, only for a delayed TMO intervention to show Amy Cokayne had knocked on and Australia continued to frustrate them. England found more rhythm as the half went on with Abby Ward and Sadia Kabeya both scoring, but still, for 20 minutes, they were given a stern test by the Wallaroos.

The second half played more to script. England started it with far more intensity and quick-thinking from Natasha Hunt after an Australian error in their 22 saw Kabeya go over in the corner to secure the bonus point.

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Australia’s No.10 Faitala Moleka was shown a yellow for head-to-head contact and England profited immediately from the extra player, scoring off the resulting penalty with yet another driving maul, and powerful forward play with Kelsey Clifford scoring. With both Kildunne and Morwenna Talling off with head knocks, England still kept their foot on the throttle, with Clifford again diving over from close range. Sarah Bern added another, but just six minutes later, she was sin-binned for a shoulder to the head.

England continued pulling and prodding away at the Australia defence, but a combination of resolute Wallaroos defence, and some dodgy passing saw the final 15 minutes return zero points. Australia will now face Canada in Bristol on Sept. 13 with England playing Scotland on Sept. 14.