Clive Woodward said he was relieved after England passed their first test as world champions, beating Italy 50-9 in their Six Nations opener on Sunday.
A hat trick of tries by center Jason Robinson illuminated a solid display that helped to quash any suspicions that England might suffer a World Cup hangover.
"When you haven't played for a while, the most important thing is to get a win under your belt and move on," Woodward said.
"The guys haven't played a competitive match together for two-and-a-half months so we are very satisfied with today's result. If someone had offered us that result beforehand -- seven tries to nil -- we would have taken it."
Woodward denied, however, there was anything routine about his side's victory, which launched England's bid to repeat last season's grand slam of five wins in the tournament.
"Italy are a good side. It was a good contest in all areas," he said. "Every year they are improving and it was a closer match today than last year's game at Twickenham [40-5 to England].
"Any team that comes here will have to play well to win."
England had a new-look following the retirement of captain Martin Johnson and the injury-absence of flyhalf Jonny Wilkinson but the pair were not obviously missed.
Flyhalf Paul Grayson, starting a championship game for the first time since 1999, had a good day as he kicked 15 points as well as bagging an opportunistic try, while former captain Lawrence Dallaglio slotted seamlessly back into the skipper's role.
"Lawrence was outstanding today," said the coach. "We weren't at our best, we made a lot of errors, but at least this result gets us back on track again. It's all about winning and moving on."
Dallaglio said there had never been any question of England's players slipping into complacency after defeating Australia in the World Cup final last November.
"To be honest I think England were always going to move on," he said.
"The World Cup was a fantastic experience and an amazing thing to be involved in, but for me it's already a distant memory.
"I've played a dozen matches since then and I think most of the guys in the team felt the same and were desperate to put it behind them."
England next travel to Edinburgh to take on Scotland and Dallaglio is expecting a stiff examination.
"Scotland will be desperately disappointed with their [23-10] defeat against Wales but they will be well prepared to face us," he said.
Italy coach John Kirwan said he was not satisfied by the performance or the scoreline.
"When you play the world champions and make mistakes you deservedly get punished," said the New Zealander. "We have got to work on ironing out silly errors. England are an incredibly complete team and very disciplined.
"Robinson had an outstanding game but you can see that when one player went off and another came on there was little difference in the standard of their play -- that's the mark of a good side."
Italy face another tough game next week when they take on France in Paris and they look certain to be without center Manuel Dallan, who damaged ankle ligaments when falling badly 10 minutes from the end of Sunday's game.
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