England to prioritise 'cohesiveness' over 'wholesale changes' for Ireland Six Nations match, says Richard Wigglesworth

England will prioritise "growing cohesiveness" over "wholesale changes" ahead of their Six Nations showdown against Ireland, according to attack coach Richard Wigglesworth.

The encounter against Ireland on Saturday, March 9, will be England’s first Six Nations match since a disappointing 30-21 loss to Scotland.

It was England’s fourth successive defeat in the Calcutta Cup, and the result generated criticism about the team’s attacking performance.

Speaking from England’s training camp in York, Wigglesworth rejected the need to completely change strategy.

"This is sport," he said. "You’re dictated by win and loss performance and it’s up to us to get them to a place where we want to get them to.

"But wholesale changes are rarely the answer. We’ve spoken about growing cohesiveness and we have to know what changes we want to make and the reasons why.

"Those days are long gone; I once played a Test match in New Zealand and the whole backline was axed the week after, but the pack wasn’t. There needs to be clear rationale, you want everything to be explained and under Steve, we’re doing that."

England let a 10-0 lead against Scotland slip as they turned the ball over 22 times during the match.

"There were signs from early on that we weren’t attacking the line," Wigglesworth said. "We were passing early away from the line and not challenging the defence. Then we made basic errors on the back of doing things that we hadn’t done in the previous couple of weeks.

"Errors are going to happen in Test matches but errors when you are trying to put your best foot forward and challenge defence is one thing and errors without challenging is another.

"Actually, your error rate goes up if you’re doing something you’re not used to. We are used to trying to challenge the line, move the ball, get quick ball and we were away from most of those things."

Immanuel Feyi-Waboso is absent from the training camp in York to attend a university exam, but England are set to be boosted by the return of half-back pairing Marcus Smith and Alex Mitchell.

The latter has only missed the Scotland match with a knee injury, but Smith is yet to feature at this year’s Six Nations.

"We’re hopeful, but we’ve not done anything yet in terms of seeing if they could get involved in a Test match," Wigglesworth said.

"We’ll see how they go today and then tomorrow will be a big day for them. Then we’ll see how they go at the start of next week."

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