Delon's determined to solve his dilemma with Irish

Under rules governing the 32-strong elite squad chosen by team manager Martin Johnson, a player could lose his place if he fails to appear in his designated position in three successive club matches.

London Irish, who are now top of the Guinness Premiership, have Australian Peter Hewat at No15 and he is their main points accumulator.

This needless dilemma has to be resolved and Armitage, who can also play centre or wing, said: "Obviously, Peter has been playing great and I need to discuss things with the club."

With Irish facing successive fixtures against Dax in the lower-profile European Challenge Cup, there is the opportunity for the club to rest Hewat at some stage and allow Armitage to wear the No15 jersey. That, at least, would remove any immediate conflict with the regulations.

Having solved one of England's recurring problems, Armitage deserves the opportunity to concentrate solely on improving aspects of his game, most notably his tactical kicking out of defence, without worrying about ridiculously tough regulations.

Johnson is also working under a rule which restricts him to a maximum of five changes to his existing 32 in January and the whole concept needs to be more flexible to aid England's cause.

Despite taking part in three heavy defeats by Australia, South Africa and New Zealand, Armitage believes England can turn things around in the Six Nations.

Armitage said: "We have a break and the boys go back to their clubs and, if selected, we need to know exactly where we are going in the Six Nations. We want to win it, not just make up the numbers.

"With teams watching our last three games they could think they will be able to pick up easy results at Twickenham and we want to be a force here. We want to turn up and prove them wrong.

"My confidence is high after I was given the four games and I want to take this back into the Premiership and do everything at a higher level.

"We still have faith in our coaches and the game plan. If we stick to it the plan works then it will be exciting. I want to be England's No15 for a long time and there are a lot of things for me to work on. I just hope that we can gel as a team quickly.

"I have learned that I can compete at the top level, whereas I had doubts before. I am not there yet and now I go back to the club and work on the areas, like kicking, that I need to improve."

Armitage is one of only a handful of players Johnson can be happy with at the end of this autumn series of matches; the others include Danny Care, Nick Easter, Tom Rees and Nick Kennedy.

The team manager will now undertake an in-depth review of the matches but, amazingly, has already announced he is happy with his senior coaching unit of Brian Smith, John Wells, Mike Ford and Graham Rowntree.

Johnson said: "It's not nice or comfortable to lose matches like this and if it did become comfortable then it would be time to go. Seeing the guys put in the effort against the All Blacks you know it's worth the heartache and pain to get there."

The Twickenham crowd does not agree and there were sporadic boos heard for the second week running, some delivered when Danny Cipriani appeared as a replacement.

That suggests the faithful are losing their religion and it will take something very special against Italy, the weakest team in the Six Nations, to repair the damage caused by Australia, South Africa and New Zealand in the last three weeks.