England have only “scratched the surface” of what they are capable of so far in their World Cup campaign, says attack coach Lou Meadows.
England have scored 38 tries in four matches en route to Saturday’s semi-final against France at Bristol’s Ashton Gate.
Twenty-two of those scores have come through England’s dominant forward pack however, leading to concerns that the backline is yet to show a cutting edge before facing tougher opponents.
“I don’t really listen to the criticism or read it too much, I’ve got too much work to do,” said Meadows.
“It comes down to our execution sometimes, there’s moments of brilliance and if some of those last passes had come off, we’d be celebrating champagne rugby.
“With the weather, you don’t want to put the handbrake on and get cautious – you want to go handbrake off and attack it and that is what we have done.
“That has come with some errors – we’ve only scratched the surface and I think there’s going to be more to come.”
Meadows joined up with the Red Roses in April 2023 with the aim of adding more dimensions to a team that had lent heavily on an up-front power game.
“I thought they were far too prescriptive, really obvious in what they were doing,” she told RugbyPass in October, external when asked for her impressions of England before she joined.
However, Meadows admits England are still some way short of their aim of changing expectations around women’s rugby with their style of play at the tournament.
“Talking about redefining the way the game is played – I don’t think we have got close to that yet,” she added.
“There is still huge room for improvement, especially in the attack side, but the girls have demonstrated their ability to get over that tryline and get the win in the way we want to do it, whether that is with our forwards, our backs, our power game, though more of our kicking game – all those elements are starting to come together nicely.”
