Fly-half Toby Flood has shaken off the dead leg he suffered in the loss to Ireland at Croke Park © Getty Images

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England will continue to hammer home the need for a disciplined performance this week as they prepare for their Six Nations clash with France at Twickenham.

England have had 10 players sin-binned in just four Tests and two more yellow cards and 18 penalties cost them a chance of victory against Ireland in their last Championship test. Manager Martin Johnson's patience finally snapped when replacement scrum-half Danny Care was sent to the sin-bin for a mindless barge on Marcus Horan.

Johnson called referee Wayne Barnes into the camp last week and the starting XV from Croke Park were put through collective punishment training.

"We all know it had got to the point where we had to look at the problem slightly differently anyway," said forwards coach John Wells. "There was a positive reinforcement. We related the conditioning work to the number of penalties we gave away in the last game.

"It meant everybody did the same. Everybody suffered at the weekend so everybody did the same thing in training. You can't just point individuals out because they have all contributed. It was just some running exercises which you could do any number of repetitions of and we just related it to the number of penalties we gave away in Dublin. It was a re-emphasis."

Barnes studied the penalties England had conceded and divided them into three categories - acceptable, grey and unacceptable. The message is that England must cut out the unacceptable penalties - Care's barge would fall into that category - while working hard to cut down on those that could go either way.

"There were probably six or seven of those in each game and we have got to get on the right side of it," said Wells. "We have to work our relationship with the referee a little bit better so we get a few more of those grey area penalties. We have got to cut out the unacceptable ones."

Wells indicated England would not bow to calls for Care to be axed for the France game and said: "We are not just going to start jumping around and dropping people willy nilly."

England's coaches also insisted that Danny Cipriani's exclusion from the national set-up is entirely down to rugby reasons and has nothing to do with an alleged personality clash.

Cipriani, 21, has not featured in any of England's three Six Nations games to date this season, with Andy Goode and Toby Flood both preferred at fly-half. And former England centre Will Greenwood has claimed that Cipriani is suffering for being the most popular player in the camp.

Greenwood told the Rugby Club on Sky Sports, "Danny has played as well as he has done for a long time. Something else is stopping him getting in. Talking to some lads both at Wasps and England, I don't think he's the most popular bloke. I genuinely think that might be counting against him."

But England's scrum coach Graham Rowntree dismissed Greenwood's view. "I've played with plenty of players I don't like and I played against plenty that I didn't like. It's certainly not crept into selection. Crikey no. I don't know where that's come from," said Rowntree.

Cipriani has been told form is the only reason for his current omission. "The coaches have only spoken to me about rugby reasons," he said after Wasps' victory over London Irish on Sunday. "For me it's just about playing well for Wasps and hopefully it will happen from there. If I'm playing the best in the country at 10 then hopefully I'll get picked."

World Cup-winner Mike Catt has joined the dissenting voices against Cipriani however, after the fly-half refused to shake his hand after Wasps' win over London Irish at the weekend. Catt speculated on Cipriani's form before the Six Nations in a newspaper column.

"'If people want to make a big thing of what happened at the end of Sunday's game, that's up to them but I'm not," Catt told The Daily Mail. "He can do what he wants, I don't give a stuff. It's no skin off my nose, believe me. I now understand what Will Greenwood was saying and I understand why Josh Lewsey knocked him out.

"'Before the Six Nations began, I was asked a question: "Do you think Danny Cipriani is playing well enough to be in the England team?" I said no.

"That's all I said. I didn't say he was a bad rugby player. I've been criticised numerous times in my career but these young guys don't really seem to take criticism, not that I criticised him in any shape or form. What he achieved last season was pretty amazing for a fly half and I praised him to the hilt. But he's not playing well at the moment."

Harlequins winger David Strettle has been called up as cover for Paul Sackey, who suffered a calf injury against Ireland while fly-half Toby Flood has returned to training after shaking off a dead leg. Elsewhere, Newcastle prop David Wilson provides the front-row cover while Leicester lock Louis Deacon has replaced the injured Tom Palmer in the England elite squad.

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