FINAL: England 134, USA 0
England beat the United States 134-0 at the WIN Entertainment Centre in Wollongong on Tuesday, November 3, 2026, an England 134-0 USA result that stands as the biggest win in the history of the England wheelchair rugby league team. The defending champions and world number one side scored 23 tries, kept the Americans scoreless, and booked their place in the semi-finals of the 2026 Wheelchair Rugby League World Cup with a group game still to play.
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The scale of it arrived early and never slowed. England led 58-0 at halftime and added 13 more tries in the second half, spreading the scoring across eight different players from a 10-man squad, and doing it with Rob Hawkins, the try-scoring hero of their opening round win over Wales, rested for the day.
England 134-0 USA: The Record That Fell
The number England passed was their own. The NRL’s World Cup coverage confirmed that 134-0 is England’s best World Cup scoreline, bettering the 125-22 victory over Wales at the 2022 tournament, and match reporting from Wollongong put the result down as the biggest score and the widest winning margin England have ever recorded in the wheelchair game. Reporters at the venue were checking the record books before halftime, because the one mark in range was France’s 154-6 win over Wales at the previous World Cup, still the largest scoreline in the international game. England did not reach that one. They settled for rewriting every England mark instead, in a World Cup match, against a team that had already lost 110-10 to Ireland in this tournament.
The opening set the tone inside the first minute. Tristan Norfolk crossed just 33 seconds after the whistle, and when Norfolk scored again in the 20th minute the finish was powerful enough to bring the posts down. Ten first-half tries built the 58-0 lead, and the second half ran the same way, one-way traffic against an American side playing only its second match of this World Cup campaign.
Four Tries Each For Billington, Haynes And Domingos
Three England players finished with four tries each: captain Mason Billington, Chris Haynes, and Luis Domingos, whose four tries came on his first appearance of the tournament. BBC reporting noted that Domingos played basketball for Portugal before switching sports and countries, and he now plays his club rugby league for Sheffield Eagles. A debut haul of four tries at a World Cup, in a side this deep, is the kind of introduction most players never get.
Player of the match, though, went to the goalkicker. Finlay O’Neill scored two tries of his own and landed 15 conversions from 16 attempts, a personal haul of 38 points. “It was quite surprising, but I’m really pleased,” O’Neill said afterwards. “But it’s not just me, it’s the entire team, I think it was a quite good team performance. Tom [Coyd] set out what he wanted me to try and do in today’s game and I felt like I did that quite well.”
The one moment the United States thought it had did not survive the officials. The Americans claimed a try through Gabriel Lee and celebrated it, only for the score to be chalked off by the match officials, preserving a shutout that England’s defence guarded as seriously as the attack chased points. Billington, speaking to NRL.com, explained the standard his side set itself: “All week we’ve been banging on about playing to the best of our ability no matter what. I’m really proud of the boys and the way we just kept at it. I’m over the moon with some of the brilliant performances from our side.” Asked by Premier Sports to rate the performance, the captain put it at at least seven out of ten, a step up from the five out of ten his side gave its opening win over Wales.
A Semi-Final Field Now Set In Wollongong
England were not the only side running up a score on Tuesday. Ireland beat Wales 68-28 to qualify alongside England, with skipper Joseph Calcott scoring six tries. France thrashed New Zealand 120-10 behind six tries from Jeremy Bourson, and hosts Australia beat Scotland 104-24, with Adam Tannock scoring six tries of his own. The four semi-finalists are now set: England, Ireland, France and Australia. Scotland, New Zealand, Wales and the United States move into the ranking competition that decides fifth through eighth place.
England close their group campaign against Ireland on Friday, November 6 in Wollongong, kicking off at 6:00 a.m. GMT, before a semi-final next week against France or Australia. O’Neill is already looking at that Irish game personally: several of his Halifax Panthers teammates line up for Ireland, and as he put it, “there’s that bit of bad blood” to settle before the knockouts start.
The history says England handle this stage. The holders have reached the final at every previous edition of the Wheelchair Rugby League World Cup, and they arrive in the last four this time carrying a 98-18 win and a record 134-0 win from their first two matches. The semi-final will be a different test, against a heavyweight rather than a developing programme, but a team that rates its own record win at seven out of ten is telling the rest of the field something plain: England believe the best version of this side has not played yet.
