Unpredictable England.

As a form of words it is up with "boring Brazil" or "underpaid financial sector CEO". Not impossible, just unusual. Opponents playing even the best England teams normally know what to expect – stopping them is the problem. Only in a brief spell under Clive Woodward, before but not during the 2003 World Cup, have they been likely to keep their adversaries guessing.

But unpredictable is what they are going into the 2012 RBS 6 Nations. The changes accompanying post-World Cup house-cleaning make Saturday's visit to Murrayfield for their opening match intriguing. Much turns on interim coach Stuart Lancaster, whose limited record at top level makes him an unknown quantity. His appointment is a sensible short-term solution to the chaos at the Rugby Football Union. With a new chief executive not arriving until late next month, a period of reflection and consideration about who and how to run the national team make sense. Rushing into a permanent appointment with the RFU still in flux would be a recipe for more disarray.

Lancaster's appointment also acknowledges that the coaching and management experience predecessor Martin Johnson lacked are not optional extras, but indispensable requirements for the job. It also makes sense that an interim appointee should have a background in player development. Even if he doesn't get the permanent job, he should leave any successor with a better group of players than the one he inherited.

If, as Woodward gracelessly pointed out last week, Lancaster's efforts so far amount to little more than good media work, it is hard to see what else he could have achieved – and England's image certainly needs improving. Maybe he is, as Woodward also argued, lucky to be where he is. But so was Woodward when he got the job in 1997, and that did not turn out too badly.

England's players have certainly discovered a different regime. Tom Wood, who accompanied Lancaster to last week's Six Nations media launch, spoke of a meeting "without much dialogue" in which the miserable World Cup campaign was discussed and the standards required made clear.

Lancaster told them that "you get respect if you behave responsibly" and offered a still clearer signal by dropping in-form scrum-half Danny Care after he was charged with drunken driving. He must hope that his players react as positively as the Wales squad did to the axing, for a time at least, of their scrum-half Mike Phillips before the World Cup after a series of infractions.

Selection also showed a new approach. Of the 32 men in England's elite squad, only 16 are survivors from the World Cup, with nine of the players uncapped. Lancaster, working with assistants Graham Rowntree – the one coach to emerge well from the World Cup debacle – and Andrew Farrell, was choosing on the basis of prior knowledge. Having run the national academy and coached England's second-string Saxons team, he points out "I've already coached all but about five or six of them".

Wood spoke enthusiastically about the level of energy at squad sessions, with players who previously felt shut out of national chances determined to make the most of opportunities. While this is the season of pre-tournament optimism – as Wales's Warren Gatland joked, "Everything's perfect at the moment – we haven't lost a match" – there is a clear shift from the grunting defensiveness of the previous regime.

Decisions are still to come with a captain and the 22-man squad for Murrayfield to be announced. The number of players available to England, and the extent of the changes already made, mean most critics will have something to quibble over, but the overwhelming impression is one of refreshment, and not only among the rookies. The return, albeit probably as a short-term deputy to Toby Flood, of Charlie Hodgson offers perhaps the most consistently creative English midfield back of the past decade a fresh international chance. And adding Saracens clubmate Owen Farrell would not only confirm that Lancaster wants football skills as well as power at centre, but also relieve Hodgson of the goal-kicking duties that helped blight previous England appearances.

England's season will inevitably play out, in the media at least, as an extended job interview for Lancaster. But he points out that "it's not about me" and says he would have made the same decisions if he were a permanent appointment.

Stopgaps often make history. The odds are that this House of Lancaster will be only temporary, but it is worth remembering that its namesake survived to run England for more than 60 years.