The London Irish star spent nearly four months on the sidelines after dislocating his shoulder and his performances against Wales and Italy were a far cry from the exhilarating form he displayed when he burst onto the scene in 2009.

His natural running game gave way to aimless kicking in both those games but the 26-year-old is determined to go back to what he does best against Ireland.

He said: “I want to terrorize the opposition and have a go at their back line and not just concentrate on kicking.

“My shoulder was perhaps preventing me from doing that when I first came back but now I am fully confident it is secure.

“I am hoping now that I can just push on and stop thinking about that and just concentrate on performing well for my country.

“I definitely want to get back to more of a running game. I want to go back to before I did my shoulder.

“The reason I got into the England team was for having a go, being a running full-back, attacking and counter-attacking and that is what I am good at so I need to bring that back into my game.

The problems don’t just stop with Armitage’s form with England’s back three only mustering one try – Matt Banahan’s score against Argentina – in their last five Tests.

And while much of the focus has been on fly-half Jonny Wilkinson’s ability to get his backline motoring, Armitage maintains it is up to the entire backline to take responsibility and lay down a marker in their match against Ireland.

He said: “As a back three I think we are kind of where we left off almost at the last Six Nations against France.

“I thought we played really well there and we have come back together again and it has been good.

“I thought our kicking game was good (against Italy) but now we want to have more of a go and counter attack a bit and show the stuff that we do at club level s hopefully we can bring that into the Ireland game next week.

“I think in some respects they (the public) are right because we do kick a lot when we are a good enough team to counter-attack.

“We have a good enough back three that are able to beat players on a one-on-one so we need to use that.

“I think there are times to do it and times not too. I think in the Italy game we could have had a go a bit more and when we did it was brilliant but sometimes it is about winning.

“We obviously do listen to what other people are saying about us. I would be lying if I said we don't but at the end of the day we are a group of guys who are honest with each other and we know what we want to achieve out of this so we are happy with where we having won two out of two.

“We are excited about the test against Ireland – they are a tough team so we know we will have to be a lot better than we were against Italy.

“We want to create this fortress Twickenham and it starts by beating teams like Ireland.”