Heading into Saturday’s fixture at Twickenham, few could have envisaged a record-breaking win for Ireland against what was supposed to be a rising England side.

Yes, the English had come up short against Scotland in Edinburgh the previous week. Despite this, it was suggested across the Irish Sea that they would bounce back with a statement performance against a sputtering Ireland team.

That went well.

Andy Farrell’s men outplayed the hosts from the first minute to the last. They would eventually emerge as winners on a scoreline of 42-21, the largest ever margin of victory for Ireland on English soil.

While the this has reinvigorated the enthusiasm around the current group of Irish players, it has had a very different effect for our near neighbours.

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The Fierce English Media Reaction To Ireland Defeat

A second successive poor defeat in this year’s Six Nations has led to some serious questions being asked about England and their prospects over the coming seasons.

Lawrence Dallaglio suggested in The Times that England were ‘humiliated’ in this game after coming up against a ‘magnificent’ opposition team.

England were humiliated. Every single player was beaten and bettered by their opposite number…

It must be said that Ireland were magnificent. All the talk before the match was of a side in terminal decline, a team full of men who had poured their heart into the British & Irish Lions tour and were now either exhausted or over the hill.

Emphatically, they proved that wrong.

He was not the only one to question the mentality of the home team.

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Also writing in The Times, Alex Lowe said that this result could mark the end of a few test careers of the players in white.

There was no way of avoiding the F words: frightful, feeble, fragile, feckless, fumbling. England’s Six Nations is over and a few international careers may well go with it…

While Farrell’s senior men seized control of the game, it was England’s established figures who let them down again…

It got so poor that elements of the crowd started sarcastically cheering Ford when he found touch after a couple of wayward attempts, which was disrespectful and about as ugly to hear as the England performance was to watch.

It is clear that this England team has flattered to deceive in recent times. They came into the Six Nations on the back of a 12-game winning streak, with Steve Borthwick talking up the prospect of a Grand Slam decider in Paris in the final round.

That arrogance has come back to bite them over the last two weeks.

In contrast, Ireland entered the tournament with lingering question marks about what looked like a clear decline in performance levels. That narrative was hardly dismissed after poor performances against both France and Italy.

However, Will Greenwood suggests in The Telegraph that the likes of Jamison Gibson-Park provided a timely reminder of his qualities in this fixture.

Everything that could have gone wrong did, and Ireland, with their wiser heads, bided their time and picked off England at will.

Jamison Gibson-Park was immense at scrum-half for the visitors and, even before Alex Mitchell’s premature departure for injury, was comfortably outplaying his opposite number. Thirty-four years old? He looked 10 years younger than that on Saturday.

Gibson-Park could play at a lower level with 14 muppets and they would go the whole season unbeaten. He is that good. Total control.

He was not the only Irish player to stand out.

Robert Kitson stated in The Guardian that Jack Crowley provided the type of out-half performance that Andy Farrell’s side had been crying out for in recent times.

To say Ireland were miles the better side is simply to state the obvious…

To Ireland’s credit they did not need a second invitation to tuck in. Their scrum was supposed to be a potential weakness and did indeed creak repeatedly.

But Jack Crowley offered more authority and craft at 10 than Ireland have previously had in this tournament.

Much was made of the potential impact of Henry Pollock ahead of this game, with the 21-year old being handed a first England start. He would go on to produce an incredibly ill-disciplined performance that saw him be outplayed by his Irish counterparts in every facet of the game.

Michael Aylwin said in The Guardian that Pollock was given a lesson as to the standard required at this level by Caelan Doris.

England had been the noisier in recent times, the future all theirs, but it turns out there is no substitute for calmness and authority.

Henry Pollock, the most obvious embodiment of a brash future, had to bend his knee to Caelan Doris here. It turns out there is a way to go yet.

Strong words.

It seems unlikely that the England postmortem into this Ireland defeat will continue over the coming days.

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