Hat-trick hero Jodie Taylor credits team-mates as England hit Scotland for six

Jodie Taylor said it felt "awesome" to become England's hat-trick hero in a record-breaking 6-0 victory over Scotland at the Women's European Championship. England's win surpassed the previous highest margin by any team in the history of the tournament, with three previous 5-0 successes recorded by Norway, Germany and Sweden.And it gave the World Cup bronze medallists a stunning start to their campaign in Holland.Taylor's treble in Utrecht was added to by goals from Ellen White, Jordan Nobbs and substitute Toni Duggan.The star of the show proudly carried the match ball into a post-match press conference, and said: "I'm happy to get off the board and score. To get three goals has been awesome."But I wouldn't be able to score without the service from my team-mates so all credit to everyone else for supplying me the ball."England slumped out of the last European Championship with just one point from three games but it looks like being a wholly different story this time, with Mark Sampson's impressive side relentless against a Scotland team who suffered on their major tournament debut.Taylor said of the match ball: "It hasn't been signed yet but I'm going to get all the girls to sign it."Her opening goal came when she ran on to a pass from Lucy Bronze that Fran Kirby smartly ran over. Taylor finished coolly beyond Gemma Fay, the Scotland goalkeeper who was winning her 201st cap."I wasn't expecting the dummy. It just popped through and I took a few touches and finished it," Taylor said.The 31-year-old has struggled with injuries during a stop-start England career, and she said: "To be here fit and healthy is a huge achievement for myself and I want to thank Mark for having a lot of confidence in me because without that I wouldn't be here."Manager Sampson said: "Overall we're really pleased with the performance and the result."To score six goals and keep a clean sheet is obviously very pleasing."The most important part for me was to see them enjoying and thriving under pressurised and difficult conditions."We know the bigger the occasion, the bigger the pressure, normally the better this England team perform."Scotland manager Anna Signeul said: "I think it was a really tough debut for us. We played against a very, very good side in England, a team that is a contender in this tournament."I think they were good in all areas and we knew that from the beginning."Obviously we were disappointed to lose so many goals. It was 3-0 at half-time and that's tough."We didn't want to do that, but what we learn from this is we'll work on our resilience and we come back."It's not over for us. We came here as a team. We've had losses on the way here in terms of personnel and I think that we are playing as a team and losing as a team and we're rising again."In a few days' time we play Portugal and that's the main focus now."You learn all the time and we'll rise again, that's what Scotland stands for."Signeul said striker Jane Ross had suffered a shoulder blow that could rule her out of the game against Portugal on Sunday. She was substituted and taken to hospital for the injury to be assessed."Unfortunately I think we lost another player in Jane Ross who was one of our best players on the pitch, but we don't know that yet," Signeul said. "It's the shoulder and she couldn't really move it."

Source: PA