Vickery warns England that one more flop will be their last

The match against Ireland will be their last at home before the new peace deal between the RFU and the Premiership clubs, with England hiring a 32-man squad at an annual cost of around £5million, takes effect this summer.

Vickery, the only survivor from the starting XV beaten 43-13 at Croke Park last February, said: "When this agreement kicks in, a lot of money is going to cross palms. Some big decisions will have to be made. People need to prove their worth. If they don't, I don't think they will be involved.

"I, for one, want to be around this England team for a little longer. The change over the last 12 months in personnel has been huge and there is no quick fix. We are low in confidence but we are not that far from being a bloody good team."

After their shocker at Murrayfield, England have one last chance to avert the crisis threatening to envelop head coach Brian Ashton and his lieutenants, John Wells and Mike Ford.

Vickery added: "It is do or die but whenever we've been there before, we've always come out with a positive reaction. I don't want to take anything away from Scotland because they played the conditions smarter than we did. I think we would have had a better chance of winning if we'd actually never had the ball at all. If we had defended the whole game, I think we might have been closer."

Vickery has put the blame for the Scotland fiasco fairly and squarely on the players. "As captain I feel I have let down the coaching team,' he said. 'When we analysed the match on Monday, we got the flip chart out and saw everything we'd talked about before the match. We talked all last week about penalties and not giving them away.

"What else did we say and what points did we make? They were all there in black and white, 99 of them out of 100. We could see what Brian, Wellsy and Fordie had said. You cannot imagine how frustrating it feels. What we have to do is make sure we put all that into operation under pressure. Last week's performance was flat and unacceptable so you can imagine that the camp hasn't been great this week. We've had issues, in the same way that there will always be issues between players and coaches. You are bringing people together from different clubs who have their own ideas so there's always going to be a slight conflict but nobody wholly disagrees with the way we are playing.

"We have to take the criticism. Some of it has been very constructive, some of it off the wall. We have to show people the team is moving on and give them something to look forward to when we play the All Blacks in June. We need to show what we really can do.

"That's what bloody annoys me. I don't want anyone to feel sorry for us but when you have two home games and you lose the first, as we did to Wales, it's pretty demoralising. Now we're back home again, we have to get better."