England strangers to the art of seduction as they wriggle past Italy| Richard Williams

Martin Johnson's side offered little romance as they struggled to a safety-first Six Nations victory in Rome today

England certainly left the romance to Italy today. Still attempting to rebuild their method and morale, Martin Johnson's players achieved their win by opting for a form of safety-first rugby that mostly refused to recognise either the date or the location.

A pleasant winter Sunday afternoon under the pine-clad hills in one of the world's most delightful stadiums might seem like the opportunity to send a card and a bunch of roses to the game and its followers. The leaders of this England squad, however, are strangers to the arts of seduction.

Instead they allowed Italy to take the applause simply for their pluck and nerve. The home supporters in the crowd of 33,000 were in ecstasies every time their players foiled one of England's lumbering incursions, and quite rightly so, given the disparity in reputation between the two sets of players.

England mounted two or three decent attacks in the first half, but it took them so long to wind up the momentum that there was always a blue shirt available to foil the final charge for the line. If you're going to make up your mind to run the ball back from deep positions, as Delon Armitage and Jonny Wilkinson attempted to do, then for heaven's sake start off with a sprint, like Clement Poitrenaud and Francois Trinh-Duc against Ireland in Paris on Saturday, rather than trundling up to the halfway line with all the panache of an earthmover before thinking about pressing the accelerator pedal.

Riki Flutey, wriggling between the tacklers in the very first minute, and Mathew Tait, always looking for a damaging angle of incursion, were the exceptions to the general air of wary circumspection, and Tait deserved his try early in the second half. But Wilkinson had the sort of match that could only encourage his detractors, and the drop goal with which he put the finishing touch to England's winning margin was like a peck on the cheek when you were expecting much, much more.

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