England's defence of their RBS 6 Nations title is to be reinforced by the likely return of Mako Vunipola and Anthony Watson against Italy, with Billy Vunipola potentially available for the climax to the tournament in Dublin.

The 21-16 victory over Wales on Saturday has created further momentum around England as they bid to become only the sixth team to defend a Grand Slam.

Strengthening England's hand as they prepare for the visit of Italy to Twickenham in a fortnight is the news that Mako Vunipola and Watson should be ready to make their first international appearances of the year. A knee injury has sidelined Vunipola since September while Watson pulled up with a hamstring problem last month.

"Mako has a big chance. He will play for Saracens next weekend and if he gets through that game OK we will bring him into camp for the Italy week," head coach Eddie Jones said.

"Watson ran at 95 per cent on Friday so we are confident he will be able to play against Italy. It will be great to have him back and we will probably use him.

"Anthony will probably stay with us (rather than play for Bath) because he has not done much rugby with us."

Looming on the horizon is Billy Vunipola's comeback from the knee ligament damage sustained during the autumn and he could be unleashed upon Ireland on March 18 as one of Jones' 'finishers' in what is shaping up to be a title decider.

"Billy might get back for Ireland. He'd be pretty useful off the bench - 150kg," Jones said.

Jones is set to make changes against Italy and will also experiment with playing style, while adding: "It's bloody important we beat Italy and we'll make sure we do."

Elliot Daly, who raced on to Owen Farrell's beautifully-judged pass to score the decisive 76th-minute try against Wales, could "possibly" be picked at full-back and James Haskell is close to regaining his starting place, but Alex Lozowski will not be tested.

A feature of England's record 16-Test winning sequence has been their superior conditioning and even Wales, previously regarded as the fittest team in Europe, could not match the champions for stamina.

Jones has revealed that a meeting in Qatar with a Spanish exercise physiologist named Alberto Mendez-Villanueva, who has worked with Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho, taught him methods that he used with Japan and that are now benefiting England.

"Wales were the benchmark team in Europe for winning games in the last 20 minutes. Now we've beaten them three times in a row so maybe we deserve that title," Jones said.

"We use a methodology which I've borrowed from soccer called tactical periodisation. Alberto Mendez-Villanueva has been involved in it quite a bit.

"Every day we train a specific parameter of the game. We have one day where we have a physical session and do more contacts than we would do in a game.

"Then we have a fast day where we try to train for at least 60 per cent of the session above game speed. We don't do any extra fitness.

"It's all done within those training sessions. Because of that we've improved our fitness enormously."

An unusual feature of the victory over Wales was Maro Itoje, who has played most of his rugby at lock, moving to the second row for scrums despite starting at blindside flanker. To accommodate him, Courtney Lawes would switch to six.

"Maro's a better scrummager. You want your best people scrummaging and there's a massive difference in people's ability to scrum," Jones said.

"George Kruis is a super scrummager, the best scrummaging lock in England so we're missing him and Maro's probably the next best.

"Rather than have our best two scrummaging locks out we decided we'd have him in. And Courtney can defend at six."

ends