Coach Brian Ashton promised that England would not go back into their shell against Italy on Sunday despite being shocked by their "seven minutes of madness" against Wales last week.

England seemed to be cruising when they led 19-9 with 16 minutes remaining in their opening Six Nations game at Twickenham but some horribly loose play handed the visitors a penalty and two converted tries to turn the game on its head.

"I don't remember, in any level of rugby, seeing a team so clearly on top giving away 17 points in seven minutes," Ashton said on Wednesday after naming his team for Rome (1430 GMT).

Forced to go through the tape of the game on Monday, Ashton said it was like watching a cartoon.

"It doesn't get any better with watching and it's not been bedtime viewing this week," he said.

"It was seven minutes of madness but a lot of the other aspects were good, we could have gone in with 25 points on the board and those are the areas you have to focus on.

"For the majority of the game it was very promising, we'd moved our game on. We know what happened, we have to try to find out why it happened and then put it right.

"You hope that situation will never arise again but if it did you would hope the players had learned their lessons."

Having promised to develop England's game from the "pragmatic" approach that took them to the World Cup final on the back of their forward power, Ashton insisted that he would not allow last week's setback to knock him off course.

"It would be very easy to go into a tight mentality, saying we can't afford to lose or not do this or that," he said.

"This team is going out on Sunday to play some rugby, we don't want to end up playing the game we played against Italy last year in a 15-metre channel.

"We've also emphasised the long-term view is that we need to move our game forwards. We can't go backwards mentally to play a certain way just to eke out a win.

"Having said that, if we get in that situation (having a good lead) I think we've got a pretty shrewd idea of what we will do."

Apart from seeking to address the "confused game management", Ashton has also had to deal with a welter of injuries that contributed to him making five changes to his team.

With Mike Tindall, David Strettle and Tom Rees already out of the tournament and Lewis Moody ruled out of the Italy game, Ashton also lost prop Andrew Sheridan after he developed an infected abscess in a cut near his Achilles tendon.

The loosehead, a piledriving presence in England's front row, also missed a World Cup warm-up against France in August after developing an infection after an insect bite.

He is replaced by Tim Payne, who Ashton said had impressed with his scrummaging after coming back from his own injuries that ended his World Cup chances.

Also in are Jamie Noon, wing Lesley Vainikolo and back rowers Nick Easter and Michael Lipman.

Jonny Wilkinson retains the number 10 jersey despite a disappointing display against the Welsh and Ashton was quick to defend the flyhalf who needs two conversions on Sunday to reach the 1,000 point mark for England.

"Jonny played some good stuff in the first 50 minutes of the game, the focus has been on that one pass that he made but it is a collective responsibility," Ashton said.

"The key thing is the confidence of the people around him and Jonny probably made fewer mistakes than a lot of other guys in the team."

Reuters