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From the win over Canada that secured England’s WXV1 title success in October, Mitchell made seven changes and some positional alterations to his starting XV, with the result a comfortable 38-5 victory<\/a> in front of 8,391 supporters in York.<\/p>\n In the early stages, no drop-off was evident. The Red Roses started in clinical fashion, the returning Claudia MacDonald scoring the bonus-point try inside 30 minutes.<\/p>\n But the second half was more of a struggle for England, who came up against a much-improved Italy and were limited to Emma Sing’s try in the closing minutes.<\/p>\n “It’s a really good start. We had new combinations and built really good pressure,” Mitchell told BBC Sport.<\/p>\n “What let the pressure off was a little bit of [lack of] urgency to the breakdown and then execution was probably the only thing that let us down in terms of building pressure in the second half.<\/p>\n “We wanted to build pressure and we have got started with that, but Italy threw a few punches at us as well and we had to deal with that.<\/p>\n “If we don’t get punches, how do you learn to get better? I think we will be better for that. Next week [against Wales] will be a new combination again. We have a bit of work to do on cohesion.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n