We thought we were in a good place, this was a lesson: Best

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Best continued: “We won the first one, it went well and then competed at the second. Then we got within ourselves and everyone got a little bit nervous. They just kept coming after us.

“There’s no doubt that it affected our game. We have to look at why it affected our game and what we can do better. I think we have to be quicker.

“They probably gave us a lesson. We were a bit laboured coming in, we gave them a few pictures to look at and read and a combination of throws not right, a couple of calls and a couple of movements not right.

“We thought we were in a good place but it was a big lesson forus.Wehavetogetalotbetter. We have to put more pressure on ourselves.

“There’s not a lot you can do except put your hands up and say we weren’t good enough there.”

Bundee Aki, who bagged Ireland’s late consolation, was similarly stark when it came to what needs to happen between now and Japan.

“We’vegotsixdaystoturnthis around, to be able to put in a performance we’re proud of,” he said.“We’vegottomakesurewe don’t replicate that kind of performance, so it’s time to put in some good, quality training and get back to the drawing board.

“We’d rather get things wrong now than in the future, but we were very slow-footed.

“England are a quality side, give them a sniff and they’ll blow you away and that’s what they did. We’ve a lot of work to do.” • A YOUNG Ulster ‘A’ side began their Celtic Cup campaign with an impressive 35-32 victory against Scarlets over the weekend.

A dramatic late try from David McCann sealed the win.

Ulster Women, however, tasted defeat when they went down 24-5 to Leinster in Armagh.

Ulster Schools, meanwhile, brought their summer series of matches to an end with a convincing 48-10 win over Irish Qual Rugby at University of Limerick.

And there was a disappointing finish to Ulster Under-19’s trip to Maynooth as they lost 28-27 to Connacht. ENGLAND: E Daly; J Cokanasiga, M Tuilagi, O Farrell, J May; G Ford, B Youngs; J Marler, J George, K Sinckler, M Itoje, G Kruis, T Curry, S Underhill, B Vunipola. Replacements: L Cowan-Dickie (for George, 53), M Vunipola (for Marler, 60), D Cole (for Sinckler, 59), C Lawes (for Underhill, 57), M Wilson (for Curry, 57), W Heinz (for Youngs, 53), P Francis (for Farrell, 67), J Joseph (for Tuilagi, 70)

IRELAND: R Kearney; J Larmour, G Ringrose, B Aki, J Stockdale; R Byrne, C Murray; C Healy, R Best (capt), T Furlong, I Henderson, J Kleyn; P O’Mahony, J Van der Flier, CJ Stander.

Replacements: S Cronin (for Best, 53), J McGrath (for Healy, 39), A Porter (for Furlong, 53), D Toner (for Kleyn, 53), T Beirne (for Henderson, 60), L McGrath (for Murray, 30), J Carty (for Byrne, 55), A Conway (for Kearney, 53)

Man of the match: Manu Tuilagi

Referee: Nigel Owens

WHEN all was said and done on Saturday, it seemed almost laughable that earlier in the afternoon Ireland had been 80 minutes away from being ranked the best side in the world.

Thoroughly thumped by England for the second time in less than seven months, it was as Joe Schmidt said not so much a game but a litany of errors.

There were numerous mitigating factors — Ireland had a host of players in their first action since May and, of course, this was a warm-up fixture ahead of the real business of the World Cup next month.

But what went wrong here did so spectacularly. The lineout malfunctioned regardless of the combination of thrower and caller (six lost on Ireland’s own ball), the tackling was woeful (34 missed) and the points tally (57) was the most Ireland have ever conceded against a team not named New Zealand.

“Iknowwecangetbetterthan that, I know we have to,” said Schmidt, who has just two warmup games against Wales before the big kick-off against Scotland on September 22 in Yokohama.

“I think the players will take GREIG Laidlaw felt Scotland showed a growing maturity after bouncing back from another poor start to beat France 17-14 at BT Murrayfield.

The 66,181 crowd must have had a sense of deja vu as Damian Penaud intercepted Peter Horne’s pass to run over for the visitors inside two minutes — the third game running that Scotland have conceded in the same time frame.

The previous weekend’s early blow in Nice led to a 32-3 defeat and France looked set to repeat their victory when Penaud went over again 26 minutes in to help put them 14-3 ahead.

But Sean Maitland’s try and Laidlaw’s conversion narrowed the deficit to four at half-time responsibility for making sure that they do everything they can to turn it around next week and then build forward the week after that because what really matters is in four weeks’ time.

“We’vegottogooutandbeas competitive and as accurate as we can be against Scotland. They had a 30-point margin against them last week and they turned around to win against France.

“So it’s a little bit what happens at this time of the year in the lead-up to a World Cup, you do get some disproportionate scores, but we still have to accept that we were not nearly good enough. We’ve got to be a lot better next time around.”

Not good enough, given Schmidt’s exacting standards, is something of an understatement. After a somewhat promising first quarter, when a Jordan Larmour try and Ross Byrne penalty edged them into the lead, Ireland’s game fell apart, lacking in both a functioning set-piece or any form of defensive cohesion.

Schmidt cited the Manu Tuilagi try just before half-time as the game’s pivotal point, England subsequently going in 22-10 at the turn before romping home aftertheresumptionofplaywith five more scores.

“There’s probably a litany of them, to be honest,” he replied when asked what was his biggest disappointment in the game.

“We didn’t get our set-piece going, we didn’t really scavenge as well as we would have liked to. We fell off 34 tackles, 21 of them in the first half.

“There was a little bit of positive in the first quarter. It was tight in that first quarter. Obviouslywhenwewentto10-8(up), there was a bit of promise there. But it’s very disappointing.

“That try just before halftime, when Conor was down and they worked the overlap against 14 men. We’ve got to be able to defend with 14 men, I certainly would never use that as an excuse, but they did well there. Just to go into the shed at half-time at 22-10, it’s a big difference to 15-10 because you’re two scores away then.

“I think we were under-done,