It is understood they will rein back their all-or-nothing approach in the Six Nations, but Slade maintains they will continue to take the initiative with their aggression. “We’re always trying to evolve the [defence] and find ways to take it forwards and improve things,” Slade said. “We still want to be aggressive and we still want to be in the opposition’s face and putting skills under pressure and going hard. We still want to be going off the line and doing some damage there.

“What we were doing before was very hit or miss. We’re still a line-speed team and we’re still going after players, but hopefully we can give ourselves every opportunity to keep making these tackles and keep staying alive.

“There’s so many moving parts to it and everything’s got to be right on to get it right. There’s a lot of small areas where if one thing’s not right, everything else suffers. What you saw in there wasn’t just one thing that wasn’t making things happen. Every now and again, there was something that wasn’t quite right, which led to everything else, a knock-on effect. It’s hard to say exactly what the problem was, because it was probably different most times.”

Slade has been retained in a midfield combination with Ollie Lawrence and first-five Marcus Smith for the eighth successive test. While England’s attack was clunky at times during the autumn, Slade is convinced they are now tuned into each other’s wavelengths.

“With Marcus being such a good attacker himself, if he sees something he goes and you have to be connected enough to just go with him,” Slade said. “Obviously he plays and attacks a lot differently to a lot of other 10s, but it goes back to the previous point of continued selection; the more you get to play with him and train with him the more you get used to it. He can do some unbelievable things, you just have to be prepared to drop what you thought was going on and just be all in on that moment.

“This campaign actually I was thinking it feels a bit more natural us coming in and picking up where we left off, rather than starting afresh. It feels like that in this Six Nations everyone has come in and got in sync way quicker than normal.”