Ollie Chessum: England must ‘hit ground running’ before Six Nations away days

Ollie Chessum has challenged England to show their true selves by ending a disappointing Guinness Six Nations on a note of defiance.

Successive defeats by Scotland and Ireland have plunged Steve Borthwick’s side to fourth in the table with away matches against Italy and France completing a Championship in which they have fallen far short of expectations.

While retaining a mathematical chance of winning the title, they would need Grand Slam-chasing France and resurgent Ireland to collapse spectacularly to be in the mix on the final weekend.

Instead, they head to Rome and Paris looking to restore the reputations that have taken a battering since opening the tournament with a 12th consecutive Test victory by crushing Wales.

“What will be, will be. We wanted to win every game, it hasn’t happened. We never go into a game wanting to lose,” said Leicester second row Chessum.

“The chances are that when you have lost two games it is out of your hands, but we will do everything in our power to put ourselves in a position and whatever will be, will be.

“We have got to get back to where we know we can be as a group. We are not a bad team, we have proven that.

“We have got great players and great talent in the room and when we get it right and pull together collectively, we are a hard team to beat.”

Against Ireland, England’s game malfunctioned in most departments apart from the scrum and for a second successive weekend they faced a mountain to climb after giving up an early lead.

The performance has been picked apart in detail during the fallow week and with next Saturday’s opponents Italy now more formidable than at any time since their entry into the Six Nations in 2000, the flaws must be addressed immediately.

“There is no point papering over cracks – we weren’t good in a lot of areas against Ireland and nowhere near where we expected ourselves to be,” said Chessum.

“The coaches have had some honest conversations and we’ve had some honest conversations as a players’ group.

“I just think that, by and large, for most of our actions, we just lacked a little bit of zip and Ireland clearly didn’t.

“When you are off by just one or two per cent against these top sides, they will make you look very silly, very quickly.

“Beforehand we had been doing that largely to a lot of teams and for whatever reason, in the last couple of games we have been one or two per cent off in small areas – just in the way we moved and that has cost us dearly.

“There’s no game this weekend so we can really dive deep into small things, makes some changes and then hit the ground running on Monday, implementing the changes in Italy.”