Vickery: I'm proud of the way we stuck together

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I loved the way the boys hit back, especially after what happened last week against Scotland. We pulled together and didn't lose faith.

It was a soft try for Ireland and I thought we were naive.We were very nervous before the game and I thought the crowd was nervy, too. It took them a while to get going but once they did, and we scored a few tries, it was a great day at the office.

We've lost to Ireland four times on the trot, so it would have been easy to let doubts creep in when they scored.

But pulling on the shirt at any time is a massive honour for me, and when I've asked guys to respond I have seen in people's eyes the determination to win — and that is very pleasing.

We need to back this up but it gets more difficult from now — two Tests against the All Blacks in New Zealand.

But if we want to be the best we have to beat the best.

We can go there and give a good account of ourselves and I don't see any reason — if we hit the standards we set today and more — that we can't go down there and get the right results.

We have shown in glimpses through this Championship what we can do.

It has been tough this week for all of us. It seems everyone who supports rugby had a swipe at us, which is fine when we don't play very well.

But the boys pulled together and I'm very proud of the team, coaches and everyone attached to the England side.

We went into the final day with the least experienced side in the Championship and we need to keep the faith in these players and coaches.

There has been a massive amount of change and as much as we all like quick-fixes it doesn't really work like that.We proved we have a nucleus of a good England team and one that can have success. And it helps when guys like Danny Cipriani put their hand up.

Brian Ashton has come in for a lot of criticism and some of the things that have been said about him have been pretty horrific. But Brian is a proud man. He cares about this job and this England team as we all do.

It always seems to take something pretty drastic for us to perform at the levels we want to. I don't know why we respond to adversity so well — perhaps it is a little bit of inexperience. We are under pressure constantly and we've set ourselves high standards.