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Neville 'bored' despite win for England's women

London - England women's manager Phil Neville demanded more despite seeing his side step up their World Cup preparations with a comfortable 2-0 win over Denmark in Walsall on Saturday.

Neville claimed to have been "bored" by the Lionesses' first half performance, but admitted his decision to organise a night's camping and training with Royal Marines may have affected their performance.

"We were hard on them because we want the standard to be better than that, but we did take them camping on Wednesday night and they got one or two hours' sleep," said the former Manchester United defender.

"It was sloppy, slow. I was bored watching it in the first half and I don't know what the supporters thought."

Neville's side are expected to challenge to win a major tournament for the first time in France later this summer and eventually had too much firepower for a Danish side, who failed to qualify for the World Cup.

The PFA women's player of the year Nikita Parris, who sealed a move to European champions Lyon earlier this week, opened the scoring in first half stoppage time, drilling a low shot home for her 12th international goal.

After a flat first 45 minutes, England took control after the break and doubled their advantage on the hour mark.

Beth Mead collected the ball from Georgia Stanway and produced a cross that veteran midfielder Jill Scott headed past goalkeeper Katrine Abel.

"We made it difficult for ourselves. It's not the best football we played but we were resilient today," said Mead. "We tucked away our chances but now we can improve."

England face New Zealand next Saturday in Brighton in a final warm-up game before their World Cup begins against Scotland on June 9.

"The next game against New Zealand I will rotate again, my players were shattered, we have worked them hard," added Neville.

"We have nothing to fear. The crowd and media are behind us, we are going into a major tournament as the best prepared team."

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