England must improve discipline | Graphic: Twickenham match stats | Ireland can dare to dream | Wales saunter over first hurdle | Lions watch: England cupboard looking bare

Every journey starts with a small step. England will find out with more accuracy in Cardiff this weekend whether victory at Twickenham on Saturday represented any degree of progress back to the uplands of world rugby or whether it was more a case of Italy slipping on the icy decision to name Mauro Bergamasco at scrum half.

It is important to remember, before dismissing this as a contest between two countries doomed for the lower reaches of the RBS Six Nations Championship, where England are coming from. Last autumn’s displays against the three southern-hemisphere powers eroded confidence and a succession of first-choice players, nine in all, subsequently fell by the way.

It would be wrong, therefore, to suddenly expect an England side to produce fluid rugby against a opposition with twice as much international experience. They did score five tries in the highest win over Italy for four years and this is never a bad thing at the start of a campaign; that no other side in the championship will offer up the gifts that poor Bergamasco did before he was mercifully withdrawn at half-time is another issue, but at least England took what was on offer.

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But you watched in vain for a playing pattern to emerge or for England to use effectively the talents available to them. The back three, with the exception of Mark Cueto, looked pre-programmed, there was little evidence of the work said to have been done in training on the clear-out, no sign at all of the offloading game that is second nature to a player such as Lee Mears and, just when it seemed possible that a rhythm might emerge, the bench was emptied on to the field and it all began again.

If this is, in essence, the side that will play Wales at the Millennium Stadium on Saturday then they needed all the time together that Martin Johnson could give them. True, his cause was not helped by playing a quarter of the match with only 14 men after the yellow cards awarded to James Haskell and Shane Geraghty — Italy’s only try came while Geraghty was in the sin-bin — and there were valid reasons for wanting individuals such as Ben Foden and Mathew Tait on the field at some stage, but it did not encourage continuity.

Better opponents will make England pay for their indiscretions; as it was, one’s heart ached for Bergamasco, a wonderful flanker winning his 70th cap but no kind of emergency scrum half and Nick Mallett, his coach and the man responsible for playing him at No 9, admitted that it was only out of respect for Bergamasco that he did not whip him off after 25 minutes, and, belatedly, he has added the veteran Paul Griffen to the squad to play Ireland in Rome next weekend.

By then Andrea Marcato, the Italy fly half, had taken all the punishment going and had to be helped from the field, while England had scored three tries, every one of which could be traced back to errors by Bergamasco. He missed a loose ball behind a ruck and England hacked into Italy’s 22 though it also took a poor throw by Fabio Ongaro to the back of a lineout to create the position from which Andy Goode scored the first try.

Bergamasco’s involvement in a ruck left space for Haskell and Harry Ellis and a horrid ballooned pass to Gonzalo García allowed Goode to kick through and Riki Flutey win the chase for the try. But England could not kick on from a 19-0 advantage; Haskell and Nick Easter shone, but the coherence only came in the sequence leading to Cueto’s fourteenth international try.

By then Ellis had shot over for his second try, and Luke McLean’s long outflanking run had paved the way for Mirco Bergamasco to score. If Giulio Toniolatti, young and inexperienced as he is, had been on the field from the start at scrum half, who knows what the final margin might have been?