Hooker Lark Atkin-Davies says England want to show "variety" in their game as they bid to win a sixth consecutive Women's Six Nations title.

The Red Roses begin their campaign live on BBC Two against Italy in Parma on Sunday, 24 March at 15:00 GMT.

"The big thing for us is showing some variety, in terms of what we can do as forwards and backs," said Atkin-Davies.

"Italy are coming off the back of three wins in the WXV so they will have confidence coming into the game.

"We know Italy always bring their flare and they run the ball a lot, so we are expecting them to bring loads of different challenges.

"It's about us making sure we focus on our performances because we know what Italy will bring with the unpredictability in their game."

England beat France to win last year's Grand Slam in front of a record women's crowd of 58,498 at Twickenham in Simon Middleton's last game as head coach.

Middleton's successor John Mitchell will take charge of the Red Roses for the first time in a Six Nations game on Sunday.

Mitchell and his squad will have one eye on next year's home World Cup, but Bristol's Atkin-Davies, 29, says winning the Six Nations is the first target.

"As much as there is that focus on the World Cup on the horizon, it's about us as players and individually doing our job first with the Six Nations.

"It's a massive tournament and we want to perform and keep elevating our performance, then we will look at the WXV and the build-up to the World Cup."

She added: "I love to be challenged and love learning, and with JM [Mitchell] coming in, he is trying to raise our game with variety and by trying to play faster.

"There is loads we can work on physically and from a game understanding point of view, but we are always trying to be better."

Atkin-Davies' comments were echoed by England assistant coach Louis Deacon, who says Mitchell is challenging the players to keep on improving.

"It has been great to have John involved and he is really challenging the players to grow our game," said Deacon.

"He wants to get better at speeding the game up and putting pressure on the opposition, and he is really challenging us to find a different way to do that.

"He is challenging us as coaches to make more of a learning environment. The amount of information we are throwing at the players is something they have probably not experienced before, but that is rugby.

"Some of our girls are very experienced and some have only been here for a year or two, so we are challenging the players on how much they pick up, particularly on game strategy and how we want to play at the weekend."