Record women's crowd ready to crown England champions again

LONDON : There will be a world record crowd for women's rugby of more than 53,000 at Twickenham on Saturday and almost all of them will expect to see England beat France, their only serious European rivals, to secure a fifth successive Six Nations title.

Other than a Covid-hit 2021, all those championships have been grand slams and another looks likely after they swatted aside the rest of the under-powered challengers this year.

In their four wins to date over Scotland, Italy, Ireland and Wales, England scored almost 10 tries a game as they chalked up 233 points and conceded 15, letting in only two tries.

Their almost unstoppable rolling maul has again proved fruitful with captain and flanker Marlie Packer scoring six tries, but against some disorganised and tiring defences, England's backs have also cut loose, led by potential player of the tournament in winger Abby Dow, who has five.

England, however, will be taking nothing for granted after last year's World Cup when their 30-game winning run ended with heartbreaking defeat by New Zealand in the final, when 42,579 set the attendance record that will be smashed on Saturday.

France are the only team remotely capable of upsetting the European status quo. They have not been quite as comfortable through the tournament, but not far off, with a positive points difference of 140.

They are ranked third in the world behind England and New Zealand and but when it comes to facing England, they have lost 11 in a row, winning only one of the last 16 over the last seven years.

They did push them in a 13-7 World Cup pool phase defeat last year and had two and four-point defeats in attritional contests in 2021, but will need to find more in attack to end a run of three successive Six