George Ford has warned England’s rivals he is ready to unleash his new kicking weapon as the Six Nations champions seek to sharpen their attacking instincts during the defence of their title. England secured the 2020 championship in October with victory against Italy before adding the Autumn Nations Cup title but were criticised for their tendency to kick possession away rather than adopting a more entertaining strategy. Eddie Jones bristled at the criticism after their ANC final win against France but has since said: “We never played as well as we could”. Ford, however, has revealed England will not necessarily be putting boot to ball less often. In his last outing for Leicester the fly-half caused Bath – and in particular his England teammate Anthony Watson – all manner of problems with a number of spiral bombs with the full‑back repeatedly flummoxed by the flight on the ball. Ford cites the protection afforded to jumping defenders as a reason why the spiral kick is enjoying a revival and he intends to employ it to the full, starting with Scotland at Twickenham on Saturday. “It was about how I can make that more challenging and difficult for these players in the back field,” he said. “The one protection these guys have is getting in the air to catch the ball. “If you can kick a generic end over end kick the ability to gauge where the ball is going to be, time your run, time your jump, get in the air is a lot easier than the kicks that are spiralling and floating around. They are impossible to get in the air for them. It’s something I think is a very, very good weapon. It is very difficult to deal with and you can get some good attacking opportunities off the back of it. Certainly, it is something I want to use going forward.” If spiral kicks present England with more attacking opportunities with ball in hand, however, Ford conceded that improvements must be made from the autumn if Jones’s side are to fully capitalise. “I know there has been a lot spoken about the kicking game, but the reason we kick the ball is to create better attacking opportunities,” he said. “That will always stay in the game, where we want to look to develop is attack and that is the hardest part to develop and takes time. We want to cause defences problems with ball in hand, we have a fair bit of work to do on the training field to do that.”