Marcus Smith believes England have put themselves in the hunt for the Six Nations title after getting their campaign back on track by beating Italy.
England lost their opening game of the Championship against Scotland and were under pressure to bounce back.
Eddie Jones’s side rose to the challenge in Rome as they scored five tries and racked up 33 unanswered points during a bonus-point victory that lifts them up to second in the Six Nations table.
Harlequins fly-half Smith was the star of the show, scoring England’s opening try and finishing with 13 points and the man-of-the-match award.
He said: “We put a big emphasis on this week. We were very disappointed on the plane home from Murrayfield.
“We had to pick ourselves up as a group. The leaders spoke well and Eddie spoke early in the week about our next job, and we put ourselves back in the competition with that win today.
“I have never played here before and it was a special atmosphere. There were loads of England fans that came out to support us, so we had to put on a show for them. We did that in parts and were a bit scrappy in parts. Credit to Italy, they made our ball pretty scrappy at times but to score 33 points is always nice.”
Jones had challenged England to “light up Rome” and they impressed during parts of this win over Italy.
Smith got England on their way with some lovely link-play out wide with Max Malins and from there he took the game by the scruff of the neck. His fingerprints were all over England’s tries, with Jamie George scoring twice and Elliot Daly and Kyle Sinckler going over, too.
George’s second try included a delightful looped pass by fellow front-rower Ellis Genge, but that was trumped by Smith shortly after half-time. Receiving the ball off a scrum, the fly-half fizzed a pass straight to Daly, who did not need to break stride as he strolled over the line to score.
When discussing Smith, Jones said: “There’s no ceiling to how good he can be. If he keeps on wanting to get better and keeps having a learning mindset, then he could be an outstanding player at Test level by the World Cup.”
England are back in action on February 26, when they host Wales at Twickenham. Courtney Lawes and Manu Tuilagi could return from injury to play in that game after missing the first two matches of the Six Nations.
