England crush Women's World Cup debutants Wales
Thirteen tries is the kind of scoreline you'd normally file under typo. Seven before halftime means the game was effectively decided in the time it takes to boil a kettle, and the second half was just Wales running out the clock on a reality they couldn't change. I keep coming back to that detail because it says something about how far the gap can stretch even between teams who share a border and a language.
I'd want to know how Wales respond, honestly. Debutants getting flattened isn't the whole story; the story is what they carry out of that dressing room. England looked like a team playing a different sport, one where every pass found its target and every decision felt pre-rehearsed. That kind of dominance can be boring to watch, but it's never boring to think about. It's the difference between a team and a machine.
I land on this: the score matters less than the fact that Wales showed up at all. The weird part of sport is that humiliation and growth often arrive in the same package.