Manager reflects on Slam slump

'This is more than my job. It's my whole life. I take it very personally. You have to take responsibility and stand up to be counted. I'm not going to understate the disappointment felt by the players, the RFU and everyone in England.

'You don't become a bad team or a bad organisation overnight but we did play badly. We should have been able to cope without certain players. We didn't. We were not a patch on the team we had been against France, Scotland and Wales. Something has happened to cause that effect and we will look at it in the cold light of day.

'This was a big game and losing it is a setback. There was a bit of shock that we had lost but having slept on it makes me even more determined to put it right.

'I don't think it's a mental thing because we have won big games. This is a big-game team but our basics, the things we are usually good at, didn't go well and that's what gets you angry. We will learn the lessons and move on. I don't think there are many more to be learned!'

Enumerating what went wrong is the easy bit. For all the exhilaration behind their conversion from a largely regimented operation into free- spirited stylists, England's flood of tries has tended to obscure a fundamental problem.

In the first two 'Six' Nations, they have won eight of their 10 matches by an average margin of 35 points and lost the other two by less than a score. In other words, England have either won by a street or been pipped at the post when the big prize has been up for grabs.

Why they got it so wrong again is not as easy to answer. The absence of Martin Johnson is one factor. The uplifting effect of his withdrawal on the opposition doubles the impact just as the inestimable Keith Wood imposed his influence over the match as a whole.

Yet it goes deeper than merely Johnson's broken hand. At a time when no investment has been spared by the RFU, how odd that the mighty English machine should suffer from not so much a spanner in the works as a whole toolbox of them chucked into a self-destructing line-out. England in Dublin looked like a reprise of the Lions in Sydney, except this time Wood reaped the benefit instead of contributing towards it.

Team selection is always easy to criticise in hindsight but Austin Healey, too good to leave on the bench, should have started at scrum half, Dorian West at hooker and Matt Perry at full back as the safer option. Iain Balshaw, whose spilling of Denis Hickie's cross-kick led to the second Irish penalty, found himself hounded as ruthlessly by the Irish as he had been in Australia.

Mike Catt and Will Greenwood suffered from a lack of sharpness following long-term injury but England had run out of fit centres so that there wasn't even one left for the bench. Yet to excuse them as unlucky would be to forgive their technical blunders and belittle the supremacy of Ireland's back row and the power of under-rated Bath centre Kevin Maggs.

Teams make their own luck and two incidents between the 55th and 58th minutes provided a perfect example of the contrasting fortunes. Dan Luger had no sooner been ankle-tapped out of the solo try of the championship by Peter Stringer than Ronan O'Gara replaced the limping David Humphreys and immediately shanked a penalty kick which somehow wobbled over the bar.

England, with Danny Grewcock leading the charge, almost stole it during a frenzied finish but, ultimately, the miserable faces and uncorked champagne said it all.