George Ford was among the try-scorers as England kicked off their bid for a hat-trick of Six Nations titles with a 46-15 victory over Italy in Rome.

But there is concern for Ben Youngs after the Leicester Tigers scrum-half was taken off the field on a stretcher after suffering what appeared to be a knee injury early in the game.

Tigers team-mates Dan Cole and Jonny May also started the game for England.

Head coach Eddie Jones said: “He’ll get an examination but he’s unlikely to be available for the Wales game.”

Ford crossed for the fifth of England's seven tries in their NatWest 6 Nations opener. The Tigers fly-half supported Owen Farrell’s run to score his sixth international try.

It followed two first-half tries for Anthony Watson and one for Owen Farrell. After the break, Sam Simmonds scored two on his Six Nations debut and the scoring was completed by his Exeter Chiefs team-mate Jack Nowell late in the game.

Ford said: “It was a tough game. We always knew Italy were going to take some breaking down as they’re a good, physical team.

“We wanted a good start and got that. Italy came back at us but we managed to get over them in that 15 to 20 minutes and that was a good positive for us.”

England’s Six Nations campaign continues this Saturday when they host Wales at Twickenham. Wales also kicked off their campaign with a bonus-point win, beating Scotland 34-7 in Cardiff.

“England v Wales is always a big game,” he said. “We will recover from this, we’ll review it and look to get better again this week.

“No doubt we’ll be focusing on ourselves but also take a good look at Wales, analyse them and hopefully put that pressure on ourselves to go and perform at the weekend.”