Ireland head coach Andy Farrell says there are no excuses to cover up their Guinness Six Nations loss to England at Twickenham this afternoon but they also can't get bogged down in the result.
Tries from George Ford, Elliot Daly and Luke Cowan-Dickie for the hosts as well as three conversions and a penalty from Owen Farrell saw Ireland lose 24-12.
Speaking to Off The Ball after the game, Farrell said a lack of intensity, particularly in the first half, allowed their opponents to dominate proceedings.
"I think they started pretty well. No excuses though, they started well against us before and we should have been ready for that.
"When you're rolling forward pretty well at the start of the match, certainly for the first 10 minutes then things start to go your way.
"We were coming here to try and win a Triple Crown and they were trying to fight to stay in the championship.
"For one reason or another, we can assess all the bits really, all the technicalities and the ramifications of accumulative errors but the reality is they came out of the blocks hard, put on the front foot and we took a few punches from them."
Farrell, who's in his first season in charge of the side since taking over from Joe Schmidt following the World Cup last year, said he wouldn't be making excuses for the result and as the man in charge the book stops with him.
"I need to look at myself, were they up for it more? That's my responsibility and I've got to look at myself first and foremost.
"I asked the players at half-time about having some proper belief.
"You get to be at your best when you're rolling forward and you're winning collisions etc. and we came off second best for large periods of that second-half too.
"I thought we put in some decent stuff towards the end but obviously it was a little bit too late. You don't want to be playing your best rugby when the game's over really."
Farrel was keen to stress that their involvement in the competition is far from over as they prepare to host Italy next before a possible showdown with table toppers France in Paris.
"As disappointed as we are, we're in the competition.
"To lose by 12 points here, we'll look back on the reasons why and take that apart and take learnings from that.
"We want to make sure that type of first-half doesn't happen again and to make sure that we're still in with a chance to win the competition. That's the reality, we dust ourselves down and we don't feel sorry for ourselves for too long and see what we can do against Italy.
"If we can perform well then who knows? We'll see if we can take it to the last weekend, we're still in the competition."
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