DISAPPOINTED. Gutted. Annoyed with ourselves. Those are the main emotions following our defeat by Ireland on Saturday.
There was a lot of glum faces, a lot of soul-searching and plenty of reflection as we sat in our changing room and listened to the Irish team celebrating next door.
Our hopes of a Six Nations Grand Slam were swept away by a fiercely-determined Ireland sticking tightly to a simple but effective game plan.
I'm in charge of our line-out and unfortunately that was the main area they targeted and where they got most success.
You cannot lose your own line-out ball as often as we did - giving possession to the opposition - and expect to win big Test matches like that. It doesn't matter how good you are, you can't score points if you haven't got the ball.
After a great week in training and a perfect warm-up, every-thing that could go wrong did.
They nicked our first line-out and carried on in the same vein for the rest of the 80 minutes. We got our movement wrong, our calls wrong and our throwing and catching wrong. Poor old Steve Thompson was substituted but the problems weren't down to Thommo: we all share the blame.
It's not as though it was all down to bad play by us, either. The Irish boys are very quick jumpers with great hands and they reacted very quickly to our throws. Matt Dawson's excellent try put us back in the game after we had struggled for the first half-hour.
The 'nearly' scores by Ben Cohen and Mark Regan might have turned it our way but for great defensive work by Ireland. We didn't deserve to win, though.
There were no particularly harsh words from Clive and the coaches afterwards. You have to lose occasionally - that's sport - and there is no sense of panic at this setback.
To put it into context, I've played 31 times for England and that was only my second defeat. But for a one-point loss in Marseilles last summer, by what was effectively England's second-team against a fired-up French side, we'd now be reflecting on the end of by far the longest winning streak, home or away, by any side, anywhere, ever. And we're still world champions!
There were no positives in terms of our performance, but I guess we have got that 'who's going to be the first to beat Eng-land?' monkey off our backs.
Post-match we headed to London's Intercontinental hotel for dinner with the Irish boys. They were understandably cock-a-hoop at their win and rightly so. We were obviously a bit more downbeat.
In two weeks' time we've got Wales and a chance to put a few things right. But there's no doubt after seeing us play yesterday that they will come at us with plenty of belief.
