Tattoos, forfeit hairstyles and Channing Tatum - inside Red Roses' winning camp

Ellie Kildunne was late. Again.

The England full-back is infamous among her team-mates for her tardiness. But this time she had a decent excuse. Her arrival at dinner had been delayed by the consequences of losing a bet at training.

Her forfeit was to straighten her mop of curly hair for the team's evening meal.

"I stay true to my word," she said. "It's only hair."

It's only hair, but it is also an important indication of the environment that England wanted to build to win this Rugby World Cup.

Not everyone in the Red Roses camp enjoyed the previous campaign in New Zealand three years ago.

Wing Jess Breach, who played only once in England's run to that final, described her 2022 experience in uncharacteristically, and unrepeatably, blunt terms in an episode of her Rugby Rodeo podcast in June.

"I don't want to have resentment and I don't want to think of it in just a negative way," she said of her hopes for England's 2025 campaign.

"I don't want people to be in the squad and feel the way that I felt in the last one."

That hasn't always been possible. Weekly selection calls invariably put pressure on a squad's unity over the course of a long tournament.

Head coach John Mitchell has admitted as much, saying "a couple" of his squad still "validate too much in their life around selection".

But Mitchell has also praised the majority of his players for the maturity they have shown about his calls. That has been helped by a conscious, collective effort to keep everyone included, regardless of their role on match day.

There has been time set aside in the team's weekly schedule for team-bonding activities. For the week of the final, it was an Asian food night.

For the semi-final week it was a slumber-party movie night, with the squad wearing pyjamas and face masks, while watching early Channing Tatum vehicle Step Up.

Away from the organised sessions, different groups have established their own routines.

Meg Jones and Hannah Botterman's love of body art has prompted them both to get tattoos in honour of the location of each of England's games. The pair had cats - a reference to Sunderland football team's nickname the Black Cats - inked after the team's opener in the north east.

Shoes, a nod to Northampton's most famous local industry, followed, with ice creams for Brighton completing their pool-stage itinerary. Jones was contemplating a hot air balloon to mark their semi-final in Bristol.

One plan they have for the aftermath of the final is to each get a London Underground tube logo. Another is a cabbage in reference to the former use of the land Twickenham was built on in 1907.

Props MacKenzie Carson, Maud Muir and Kelsey Clifford have collated memories and mementos in scrapbooks.

Tatyana Heard and Lark Atkin Davies lead a little book club.

There has been gaming - with an old-school twist. Muir and Jones have been playing Rummikub - a tile-based game inspired by the card game Rummy - while Kildunne has brought the Guitar Hero console game into camp.

All of it helped to keep the pressure of being both hosts and heavy favourites at bay.

A mantra repeated again and again inside the camp has been to "be where our feet are".

The idea is not to look ahead to what might be or back at how far they have come, but exist in the present, without second-guessing yourself or the consequences of making a mistake.

The squad have not been totally insulated from the outside excitement about their progress though.

One morning, on their way to the training pitch, they were confronted by a large pinboard with good luck messages from primary school children around the country.

There have also been post-match dressing-room visits from both footballing royalty, with Euros-winning Lioness Chloe Kelly celebrating their win over Samoa, and actual royalty.

Catherine, Princess of Wales, told the team that they had her worried after an even first half against Australia in Brighton. Wing Abby Dow, the most prolific in the team's collection of crocheters, presented her with a bouquet of knitted red roses as a gift from the team.

The unity of the squad is evident on game day.

Emily Scarratt, appearing at her fifth World Cup and a veteran of the team's last successful title tilt, has been running the water for those selected ahead of her.

Abi Burton, whose game time has been similarly limited, purchased a drum which has expanded into a full percussion support section.

As she sat out the quarter-final win over Scotland with concussion, Kildunne was one of those to enthusiastically take up the drumsticks.

Botterman is generally in charge of the pre-match music playlist, while the players' intricate braids are woven into place on the morning of the match by an external specialist - the Braid Maidens - because the players doing each others' became too time consuming.

The most telling of all the squad's superstitions is that of captain Zoe Aldcroft. She stows a small knitted figurine of legendary England fly-half Jonny Wilkinson, made for her by a friend's grandmother when Aldcroft was a teenager, in her kit bag for every game.

And just like Wilkinson, she is now a Rugby World Cup winner.