Youngs: We must learn for Six Nations

Ben Youngs does not believe England will retain the Six Nations title unless they significantly improve on their autumn series form.

There was a collective sense of dissatisfaction with the performances, according to Youngs, who says England must raise their game if they are to become the first team to win three Six Nations in a row.

“We know that what we’ve done over the last three weeks won’t be good enough to compete for the title,” the scrum-half said. “We need to learn pretty quickly in areas that have let us down.

“We want to be a better team than we are now. There is not an area in our game that is outstanding. There are a lot of good areas, but there is a lot of growth in our team and that is exciting.”

With Ireland, who matched England’s clean sweep, and Scotland, who recorded a thumping 53-24 defeat of Australia after nearly beating New Zealand last week, Youngs and coach Eddie Jones expect the tightest Six Nations to date.

“It is unbelievably competitive,” said Youngs. “We have to get off to a good start. We have Italy first up, so we won’t look beyond that.”

Asked to expand on where England could improve, he said: “One of the key areas we were looking at was more attacking kicks, with the amount of teams that keep blitzing in defence, who have 14 in the line.”