England’s Daly confident of Six Nations turnaround

Elliot Daly is adamant England can put their shock defeat by Scotland behind them as they seek to get their Six Nations title defence back on track.

England began the 2021 edition with an 11-6 Calcutta Cup loss last week that was far more comprehensive than the final scoreline suggested as the Scots won at Twickenham for the first time in 38 years.

But Eddie Jones’ men also lost their 2020 Six Nations opener, against France, before being crowned champions and England full-back Daly said that, with perennial strugglers Italy up next for the Red Rose brigade at Twickenham on Saturday, all was far from lost.

“We know what we’re capable of,” Daly told a conference call on Friday. “It’s always disappointing when you lose, but it’s about how you go into the next game.

“Our performance wasn’t where we wanted it to be against Scotland, but we have this chance to put it right and get back to what we’re good at, so that means ball in hand and putting dangerous players into dangerous areas.”

He added: “These competitions aren’t won on the first weekend. We know we can turn it around so this is a good opportunity to really fly into it and see where we can put ourselves.

“We’ve been looking at what we can do to get back playing in the way we want to play and enforcing our game on the other team.

“Our best performances have been off the back of really good defensive sets, so whether that’s big hits in the game or all working together to get the ball back. We’ll be focusing on that against Italy.”

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