Nine days ago, England would have lost that match. Their composure would have gone, they would have folded and they would have subsided to their first defeat to the Italians.

That was the analysis of Brian Ashton, the England head coach. Contrary, surely, to pretty much everyone else in the stadium or in front of their televisions, he reported that he did not at any stage sit there thinking: “Jesus Christ, we’re going to throw this one away.”

Others may need more evidence, but Ashton’s point is that England are on a progress curve. From nine days ago against Wales, they have found an inner metal, a composure and a steeliness in defence. Nine days ago, they lacked that and lost; yesterday that element of mental tenacity was the difference. “It’s pretty well documented that we folded last week,” he said, “and I don’t think we did this time. If it had been last week, we’d probably have lost the game.”

For England fans, it will be reassuring to know that this was not a head coach simply massaging a dodgy performance and an uncomfortably narrow result. Ashton does not really do “massaging” anyway, but the tenor of his views was echoed by Steve Borthwick, his captain. “We were a stronger side today,” he said. “We are learning and developing.” And crucially, of the way that England succeeded in hanging on grimly to victory where against Wales they let it go, he said: “That will make us stronger, without question.”

This is all important if only because England appear to believe it. In which case, it may just be true. From the stand yesterday, however, the “England are back” view of the world was mighty hard to buy into.

What is fast becoming apparent is that England’s stirring revival in the World Cup is looking increasingly like a blip, a brief spasm of excellence amid a longer period in the wilderness of decline. England were poor before the World Cup, they were astonishingly bad at the start of it, they then dredged up those two stirring victories against a poor Australia and a fragile France, but have they managed to return to the heights of those games? No, they have not.

Two Six Nations matches thus makes revisionist historians of us all. England did not become a good team in that World Cup; they were an average team that, for two successive weekends, played magnificently above themselves. Supporters would naturally have hoped that the England of last October was here to stay, the shape of things to come, the foundation from which to build, the start of a grand new era. However, the evidence of two weeks in the Six Nations is that they have returned to the mediocrity of before.

A beacon of hope for England against Wales and preWorld Cup was that they created try-scoring chances but failed to nail them. The difference in Rome yesterday was that, bar the two tries that they did score, they barely got close again. And against Wales, they had a wealth of possession; in yesterday’s second half, they barely saw the ball. And when they did, they kicked it away. All of a sudden, they are team that slide horribly when the referee has blown his whistle to start the second half.

The players know all this themselves. They are not kidding themselves of that, they are not under any blind assumptions as to the quality of their rugby. But what is important to them is the belief that they have turned some kind of a corner and are now on the ascent.

They could have come away from the Stadio Flaminio feeling that this was a Pyrrhic victory that they narrowly shaded. As it is, they dogged out the win and, if Borthwick is to be believed, they had an atmosphere in the dressing-room that was buoyant with glory, of having hung on and defended their lead.

Call it their Mark Robins moment, if you like. Robins scored the FA Cup goal from which, fable has it, Manchester United built a dynasty of glory. At this stage, though, we have little more than Borthwick’s words to persuade us that England are constructing anything.

A strong scrummage and yesterday’s excellent lineout do indeed make for an impressive base from which to build. More important is the belief that they are on the right path. If their young and inexperienced players are, as Borthwick tells us, fortified by the experience of coming through yesterday’s scare, then maybe England are a growing force.

For now, though, they do not look it. They look far from it. Nine days ago, they may indeed have lost this match; but that tells us less about how far England have come and more of where they have come from.