Jonathan Joseph has claimed that England's defence deserves a huge slice of credit for playing a big part in the convincing victory over Italy.

The Red Rose stepped things up in the second half in Rome to secure a 40-9 win and keep their Grand Slam hopes alive in the 2016 Six Nations.

Joseph bagged a hat-trick of tries in the space of 18 minutes at the Stadio Olimpico, but he was quick to heap praise on his teammates who gave him the platform to cross over.

Speaking after the game, he told ITV Sport: "We are very proud of our defence, our defensive structure. We like to squeeze teams and we felt that was what we were doing there. We forced an error and luckily, I was the guy that got on the end of it.

"We spoke about starting well - unfortunately, we didn't quite get that today - but once we got into it, we showed what England can do and we are very proud of that performance.

"We just had to come out firing in the second half. For us, everything was in place, all the principles, we just made a few errors early on. But we managed to eradicate that and move forward."

England will look to maintain their unbeaten start to this year's championship when taking on Ireland at Twickenham on February 27.