- England 4-0 Northern Ireland
- Mead 64 74 78, England 72
The post-match lap of honour was lengthy, the smiles were broad. Thanks to Beth Mead the second-half super sub, England’s perfect qualifying record for the 2023 World Cup endures. Until Mead arrived, taking mere seconds to score the first goal of a hat-trick, Northern Ireland, for whom goalkeeper Jackie Burns had been outstanding, looked like denying England on a historic day for the women’s national team.
England firing blanks against inferior opposition might have added a sense of anticlimax to the first competitive women’s international in Wembley’s 98-year history as the national stadium. A combination of a continuing pandemic, ticket prices and a full programme of Premier League and Football League action had led to an attendance of 23,225, way short of the 77,768 that saw the November 2019 friendly with Germany.
