The 15-9 Murrayfield defeat against Scotland ended England’s lingering title hopes and many stinging stories followed in the media.

Victory over Twickenham visitors Ireland would guarantee a top-three finish, yet it all represents another disappointing campaign.

It is now five seasons since England were last crowned RBS 6 Nations champions.

While Wales go for championship and Grand Slam glory in Cardiff, England will be playing for pride. Not that Bath lock Borthwick sees it that way.

He is among the 14 players retained by head coach Brian Ashton following England’s Edinburgh defeat, with only fly-half Jonny Wilkinson dropped after a poor team performance.

Borthwick, who captained England to victory over Italy last month and wins his 37th cap against Ireland, accepts it is a considerable show of faith by the boss.

He said: “Everyone who was on the field for any period of time takes responsibility for that performance last Saturday, there is no doubt about that.

“We are determined to put in a much bigger performance this weekend. We know we are in for a big challenge against a tremendously strong and experienced team.

“For me, it’s great we have got another game seven days later and there has been no long wait until the next match.

“We can talk in the week and work on our skills, but mistakes happen in games, and too many of them happened last weekend.

“Sometimes things happen in sport. Unfortunately, it happened to us last Saturday.

“You can look at it in a negative way or in a positive way. We are trying to improve every single week.

“For ourselves, the management team and our supporters we are determined to put it right. It is a group of players who want to make amends and get better as a team.”

England’s supporters are desperate for an impressive all-round performance at Twickenham and Borthwick is keen to produce one.

He added: “We are bitterly disappointed with last weekend, and what we need to do is make sure we learn from that experience and move forward.

“The mind has focused very quickly.

“I think it is very rare that any player has very clear thoughts about a game immediately afterwards without reviewing it in the cold light of day.

“But ultimately, we gave too many penalties away and made too many individual errors, which was pretty evident to everybody.

“In international rugby, the margins are really small. We went in as favourites and people wrote Scotland off, which I think Scotland probably enjoyed.

“We respected them as opposition. We knew they had a very good kicker and we knew they could put us under a lot of pressure, and we made too many errors which gave them opportunities to win the game.”