England begin Women's Six Nations title defence with dominant win over Italy

England begin Women's Six Nations title defence with dominant win over Italy

Early score: England wing Mia Venner goes over inside three minutes for the team's opening try during their 38-5 Women's Six Nations win over Italy in York

England launched their Women's Six Nations title defence with a commanding 38-5 bonus-point win over Italy in York on Sunday.

The Red Roses are overwhelming favourites to win a seventh successive title and fourth consecutive Grand Slam ahead of this year's Women's Rugby World Cup on home soil.

England opened the scoring in just the third minute when wing Mia Venner, making her first international appearance in five years, scored the first try of the match.

Emily Scarratt, Claudia MacDonald and Amy Cokayne also crossed over in a lopsided first half that ended with England 33-5 ahead.

But they had to wait until two minutes from time to get their next point when full-back Emma Sing added a try to her three conversions.

England have now lost just one of their last 52 games -- but that sole reverse was an agonising 34-31 defeat by New Zealand in the World Cup final three years ago.

They have been beaten by the Black Ferns in five World Cup finals, with native New Zealander John Mitchell, a former coach of the men's All Blacks, brought in to help England go one better.

Mitchell, in a bid to test a squad that rarely gets put under sustained pressure by their opponents, selected an experimental team against Italy and was broadly happy with his side's performance.

"It was a good start with some new combinations, we built really good pressure," Mitchell told the BBC. "We lost a bit of momentum at the breakdown and our execution probably let us down a bit, in terms of building pressure in the second half."

Venner enjoyed an excellent start, both scoring England's first try and then setting up Scarratt for the hosts' second minutes later.

An England penalty try was followed by Italy's Laura Gurioli being sent to the sin-bin and the hosts had their bonus point before the interval when MacDonald caught Holly Aitchison's cross-kick before scoring in the corner.

Italy did manage a try through Francesca Sgorbini but Cokayne ensured the visitors' joy was short-lived when she pounced on an over-thrown line-out to score a try from close range.

But improved Italy defence and some uncharacteristic England errors meant it wasn't until the 78th minute that the scoreboard changed again when Sing sprinted clear of the cover.

England continue their Six Nations campaign against Wales, beaten 24-21 by Scotland on Saturday, in Cardiff on March 29 when the Scots are away to a France side fresh from defeating Ireland 27-15.

Italy are at home to Ireland in the final match of the second round on Sunday, March 30.

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