Freddie Steward wants England to bounce back in Dublin

England full-back Freddie Steward has urged his side to bounce back in the fifth and final round of the Six Nations tournament in Dublin on Saturday.

England were handed their heaviest defeat at home in the previous round when they were hammered 10-53 by France. It also meant the red rose team have two defeats from four matches in the competition since Steve Borthwick took over.

They will now be lining up against the number one ranked side Ireland, who have four wins from as many games and are eyeing a Grand Slam.

Steward, who was England's only try-scorer in the game against France feels his side can seek redemption if they can put on a strong show against Andy Farrell's men.

"Saturday was pretty bleak and I’d like to think that from there the only way is up and that we’ll improve," said Steward, the only player to emerge with any credit from the wreckage of round four.

"Grief is a pretty good way to describe it. It’s never nice to lose, but then to lose by a margin like that is pretty sore.

"The most frustrating thing is that we had ourselves to blame and there’s no shying away from that.

"At times like this you don’t want to splinter off because then the wheels would fall off. We’re in a good spot at the minute because we’ve stayed tight.

"As [defence coach] Kevin Sinfield has said to us, these weeks define teams. When you go to the depths that we did, that’s where you really challenge yourselves to pull together and come up with something.

"Hopefully we’ll look back on this when we regather in a couple of months’ time as a real point where we stepped up and improved."