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Shaunagh Brown: ‘Nobody wants England to put 50 points on everybody'
Shaunagh Brown believes both England and the Guinness Women’s Six Nations as a whole need Saturday’s Grand Slam decider against France to be competitive.
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The Red Roses have not been beaten in the championship since losing to Les Bleues in Grenoble seven years ago and are closing in on a seventh successive Six Nations title.
John Mitchell’s side have won all four of their matches so far by an aggregate score of 213-29 and head to Allianz Stadium on a 24-match winning run.
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Brown was part of an England team that won 30 games in a row only to lose the World Cup final in 2022 – the Red Roses’ only defeat in their last 55 matches – and the former prop says the side needs to be challenged before hosting the showpiece tournament later this year.
“It’s very important that it’s close because teams need to be tested,” Brown told RugbyPass.
“If you look at the last World Cup, and obviously, we’d won 30 games [in a row], but ultimately, we lost the World Cup final, the one game that mattered. And that was the most testing game we’d had in a few years, to be honest.
“So, it’s important for teams and for England to be tested as often as possible. It’s important for the tournament to get people interested because nobody, including England, wants to see England put 50 points on everybody all of the time and it’s not what the neutral fan wants to see either.”
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But Brown does not believe the onus is on the Red Roses to slow down. “It’s on the other nations to catch up because I would expect England to keep ploughing on, keep raising the bar, keep setting higher standards,” she added.
“If other nations can’t keep up, there’s not too much England can do about it except by playing and showing what can be done when you invest in your women’s and your whole female structure in your country.”
Brown was happy to see the Red Roses display resilience when it was needed against Italy and Ireland, and highlighted former teammate Abby Dow as the standout performer in this year’s championship.
Dow, who won her 50th cap against Ireland in round three, has scored four tries in three appearances so far.
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The pick of those was her first in the 59-7 victory against Scotland in Leicester last week. Receiving the ball on the right wing, almost 10 metres inside her own half, Dow handed off two Scottish defenders and burst through a third would-be tackler en route to a stunning solo try.
It was the finish of a player in supreme form. But it did not come as a surprise to Brown.
“She impresses me every time she gets the ball,” Brown said. “You give her half a yard of space and most people would do the safe thing, take it into contact. You might take it back infield a bit to get closer to your support and all the things like a rugby textbook tells you that you should do.
“But just give Abby Dow the ball, and she is handing off people left, right and centre. She’ll happily dance along the touchline and not feel the need to come back in. Even to the detail of the hand that she has the ball in to make sure she’s got the correct free hand to hand off opposition.
“We saw it on Saturday, where I think she handed off three in a row within centimetres of the touchline because she’s also strong enough that she can resist someone coming towards her. It takes a lot to get Abby Dow into touch.
“So, yeah, very impressive from her and … she’s only growing as well, and you see her improving and coming on better. But certainly, my standout performer of the tournament.”
Brown knows Dow well, having made her England debut alongside her, against Canada in 2017, and been part of the Red Roses squad that broke records en route to the last World Cup final.
Dow will win her 52nd cap against France at Allianz Stadium on Saturday and her former teammate believes the winger is reaping the rewards of the hard work she puts into her game.
“Her Red Rose number is 215 and I’m 216. So, we’re right next to each other,” Brown, speaking in her role as an ambassador-shareholder of Step One, said.
“She’s very much an academic person. Things written down, they need to be logical, they need to make sense, and she needs to understand it and so that then reflects in her game.
“Abby doesn’t just do things for the sake of doing it or maybe because somebody told her to do it. She fully studies, understands why she’s doing it, what impact this will have on things moving forward.”
The former Harlequins prop added: “She knows so much detail about the whys and whens of the game. Maybe not the whole game and not say the scrum and lineout, but certainly of a backline game, of the back-three game and everything she does on that wing.”
Dow also played in Brown’s final game for England, the World Cup final defeat to the Black Ferns in Auckland in November 2022.
Although it is less than two-and-a-half years since that showpiece match at Eden Park, Brown accepts that the expectations on front-row forwards – especially those playing for the Red Roses – have increased.
The likes of Sarah Bern, Hannah Botterman and Maud Muir have change perceptions of what it takes to be a prop. “In open play you’d think they were a bunch of back-rows running around,” Brown said.
But she believes the “No1” skill for a prop remains scrummaging. “It has to be,” Brown insisted.
“There was a period of time when I wasn’t being selected. First time ever, I was completely fit and not being selected because my scrummage wasn’t good enough.
“My open game was fine and my lineout lifting, but ultimately the bread and butter of a prop, no matter what you do in open play is scrimmaging.”
She added: “There’s nothing greater than seeing Sarah Bern go one on one with a back and just hand her off clean. Then she’s got the full-back to come up against and you think, ‘Oh, I feel sorry for the full-back right now’.
“But, I mean, everything’s expected as a prop and it can be so hard. I love it when front rows get player of the match because nobody really appreciates the scrum.
“Unless you’ve scrummed in your life, nobody really appreciates how good a scrummaging prop is.”
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