‘Sometimes you need to blow the lid off’: England confident of Rome response

England have “blown the lid off” in order to complete their Italian job and salvage their Six Nations campaign with Maro Itoje promising an emotional response to back-to-back defeats.

Steve Borthwick’s side are out of contention for the Six Nations title for another year after dismal defeats by Scotland and Ireland but have won all 32 previous meetings with Italy and spent the championship’s fallow week ensuring they avoid a slice of unwanted history in Rome on Saturday.

Borthwick invited nine of the 2003 World Cup winners to dinner with his squad last week while Thomas Tuchel addressed his players on Tuesday with England determined to find a physical intensity that was absent against Scotland and Ireland.

In response, Borthwick has made 12 changes – nine personnel and three positional – and sent a clear message to his players with the assistant coach Richard Wigglesworth laying down the law. Asked if he has had to keep the leash on England before kick-off in Rome, Wigglesworth said: “I don’t think I’ve tried to put a lid on it too much. The physical intensity that we need to bring, sometimes you need to blow the lid off.

“I think the table-banging and that sort of era has crept out, but there’s always a time. It would be done on feel. You need to feel what the group needs. I would hope that we’ve got that right in the last 10 days so that we play really well Saturday afternoon.

“Physically we weren’t where we wanted to be, our physical intensity. The game of rugby is really complicated and has all these intricacies, but at the same time it’s really fucking simple. If your physical intensity is not right, then parts of your game really struggle to put together. We didn’t sort that out.”

The captain, Itoje, meanwhile, has said that England have dialled things up a notch in preparation for facing a bullish Italian side who have beaten Scotland and showed themselves to be competitive against Ireland and France to date.

“We have just addressed some of the issues we have been lacking a little bit and I think there’s been a response to that,” said Itoje. “There was a response to the basic fundamentals of our game and naturally when things don’t go your way you want to see a response, you want to see a reaction, and I believe we’ve seen that so far.

“Ultimately it looks like intensity going up a notch and that obviously manifests itself in a number of ways in training. But I would say the intensity and accuracy has probably stepped up. We all care. We all want to win. When you don’t win it heightens the emotions even more. There has definitely been an emotional response at training. The most important thing is we see it in the game.”

England have paid the price for slow starts in both recent defeats and while Itoje was tight-lipped as to his final words for his players, they will be left in no doubt as to the task at hand. “The tone will be to relish the opportunity, relish the moment that we have, remember how privileged we are to do what we do,” he added.

“We have a responsibility to ourselves, to everyone in the room, everyone in this programme and our fans. The very best of ourselves is aggressive, the very best of ourselves is confrontational, the very best of ourselves is accurate. We need to make sure we deliver on that.

“In one sense you want to have the same things every week. In another sense, every week presents its different kind of challenges, a different narrative et cetera. This week is about us taking the game to Italy. They’re a very good side. It’s not about us waiting to see what happens or how they shape up. As soon as the game starts, it is about us taking the game to them.”