Dublin - The atmosphere in the changing room was like a mortuary after England were "stuffed" 43-13 by Ireland, Brian Ashton said on Saturday as he admitted to being at a loss to explain the physical dominance of the home side.
"We were well-beaten at the end of the day, 'stuffed' I think was the word I used and that's the word we used in the dressing room and the players know that and accept that," Ashton told reporters after his side's record defeat.
"I don't feel embarrassed, I don't feel humiliated at all, no, I feel as though there's a hell of a lot of work to do."
'The Irish players looked a lot more physical' Ashton said there had never been any question that Ireland were the better side but admitted England had even been outflanked in areas where they might have expected to dominate.
"We were hoping that we'd get parity up front, scrummage, lineout wise, but it was around the collision areas too," he said. "The Irish players looked a lot more physical than we did today and that was something I didn't expect and again, what you trace that back to, I haven't the faintest idea."
That chimed with comments by Ireland coach Eddie O'Sullivan who said his side had put in a "very, very good performance to bounce back from a sickening defeat against France", making it difficult to pick out any one player for praise.
"If you can get 11 or 12 of your guys playing at close to man-of-the-match standards, you're going to be hard to beat," he added.
O'Sullivan said Ireland's win was all the more impressive given the wet conditions at Croke Park.
"It would have been easy to go into our shell and play ping-pong," he said. "To score 40 points in those conditions is a fair bit of credit to the lads."
Asked to explain the scale of England's defeat, O'Sullivan said Ashton would probably be the first to admit that his side had shown its relative lack of experience on the field.
"Unfortunately, the only way to get experience is going through the grinder," he said, adding that England had also paid the price for the sin-binning of lock Danny Grewcock.
"I think we were quite clinical and ruthless... coming up to halftime, when they had one man in the sin-bin, we punished them with two tries."
The Ireland coach said the first quarter of the match had been little more than "shadow-boxing", but thereafter it turned into a game that may not have been Ireland's greatest ever but certainly one that was "pretty much right up there".
Captain Brian O'Driscoll said his side had also been driven on by the knowledge that, after losing to France at Croke Park two weeks ago, it was an opportunity for the players to show their gratitude to the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) for allowing them to use the historic stadium for the first time.
"We didn't do that in the French game so that only left us with one game for the rest of the year," said the captain.
For his part, Ashton said his main mistake had probably been failing to field a team that was as fresh as Ireland.
"Maybe, because of the limited amount of time we had available, maybe I got that organisational bit wrong," he said.
"We'll get together and talk about that and see if that was the reason we weren't as fresh as Ireland appeared to be. I mean they outsmarted us thinking-wise and pace-wise in almost every area of the field."
Ashton said playing at a similar level to earlier wins over Scotland and Italy had simply not been good enough.
"I knew that we were in for a really difficult afternoon. We'd not played well enough against Scotland and Italy to beat Ireland... We didn't step up our performance."
Bring on the All Blacks....
You got to love Brian Ashton, he managed Ireland to our record defeat against England in the 90's and now a record defeat for England against Ireland. Is this all part of an elaborate attempt to get his name in the rugby records at any cost? Or is he just no very good?
I think your on to something there Paul.....
