Steve Borthwick admits the pressure has affected England’s Six Nations campaign

“I respect that there’s a lot of discussion about our tactics – when you look at the end point, you look at the score and the number of tries scored, that’s completely understandable,” Borthwick said.

“I think it’s more about improving that accuracy in our attack and getting over the try line rather than necessarily doing any overhaul.

“You have an overview, a structure of ‘this is how we want to approach different aspects of the game,’ and then we talk about which players bring their own points of difference.”

The day after the defeat to Italy in Rome on Saturday, Bill Sweeney, chief executive of the Rugby Football Union, issued a statement supporting Borthwick, saying he was confident the coach and his staff would “do everything we can to make this happen”.

Borthwick says he speaks to Sweeney “at least once or twice a week” and Conor O’Shea, the RFU’s director of rugby performance, “almost daily”.

“Since I started this role in late 2022, we have always worked very closely together,” Borthwick added.

“I think I was always very clear about the vision for the team, going forward very quickly initially to the 2023 Rugby World Cup which was just around the corner, and I have since built through each of those competition windows since then.

“We are all disappointed and frustrated.

“We came into this tournament with really high ambitions, as did the players, and we couldn’t achieve those goals we set ourselves.”