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 in front of 8,391 supporters in York.
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.
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.
“It’s a really good start. We had new combinations and built really good pressure,” Mitchell told BBC Sport.
“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.
“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.
“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.”
