Lionesses put down World Cup marker to prove sights are limitless

Under an almost full moon, England poured a few more golden rays of sunshine. As homecomings go, this ticked most boxes: a celebratory atmosphere; the national stadium near enough full; the palpable sense of occasion as the tube station funnelled its public down on to Olympic Way. Then there was the rip-roaring spectacle delivered inside and the invigorating sense that, while the Lionesses’ summer heroics were its springboard, there is still no telling exactly where they will land.

The answer may be known by 20 August, when the World Cup’s two best teams will square off at Stadium Australia. It is hardly outrageous to suggest we were watching them here. England and USA served up a sometimes alarmingly open, consistently full-throttle affair that simultaneously meant nothing and everything. Even if no prizes were on offer, there in plain sight was the proof that England’s sights should be limitless: that, in delivering only their third win in 19 iterations of this fixture, they have set down a marker at a time of seemingly inexorable momentum.

It was an evening to bathe in the glow, but also one on which to understand the shadows. Before kick-off a dozen of the first-ever official England women’s team from 1972, led by their captain, Sheila Parker, were presented with caps in the home dressing room. Holding their new awards, given out 50 years too late, they formed a guard of honour for their modern-day successors and it was impossible to escape the poignancy. Every step forward taken by this team, by this sport, feels all the more necessary and loaded due to the neglect that came before.

How Parker and her contemporaries must have delighted in the speed and imagination of England’s front four, who ran an understrength