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These are scenes which we had almost forgotten.

Jubilant Irish fans at Twickenham leaping up and down. Men in white looking down in the mouth. Clive Woodward glum and forlorn.

Visiting captain Brian O'Driscoll scrolling through the messages on his mobile in the gym after this shock 19-13 win and grinning to me: "I've got 27 so far. This is great."

And the World Cup winners? Ouch.

Captain Lawrence Dallaglio emerged to say: "We had enough chances to win it at the end. It was a six point gap and we had time. But it just didn't happen.

"I'm not going to stand here and talk about the referee or the disallowed tries."

And what about hooker Steve Thompson?

England's former roller skating champion at 12, he emerged in four short years as the world's greatest No 2.

Yesterday he produced perhaps the worst peformance of his life, throwing away 11 of England's 30 line-outs and generally looking like a man who has run out of ideas.

This is not how World Cup winners play. This is not the way Twickenham expected to greet the homecoming heroes.

The first competitive Twickenham clash since that wonderful night in Sydney last November was cold and damp in all ways.

Ireland fly-half Ronan O'Gara grinned: "I didn't give my first kick the respect it deserved. But after that I thought I did a fine job.

"England won the World Cup but we got stuck in to them today."

And behind him Richard Hill, one of the few En gland players who actually performed, was telling us: "It was all hugely disappointing. Our ball retention. Our contact play. We didn't play well, we didn't deserve to win.

"We've got to take it on the chin. We'll be very critical when we go through the video."

Vice captain Will Greenwood enjoyed the gloomiest of 50th internationals: "We didn't think it would go wrong like this. We've taken plaudits together for 18 months, we'll have to take this together today. We lost as a team.

"We thought at 19-13 we had a chance with the chip over but it bounced. Sometimes you don't get the bounce. Tyrone Howe got there just in time."

Greenwood, always the most articulate of men, then explained how his delay cost Ben Cohen the disallowed try early in the second half.

"I'm not doing an Arsene Wenger and saying I didn't see it, but I'd always give him the ball in space.

"I've got to be honest and say I didn't see Ben out there."

And this final pay-off: "You stand back and applaud the Irish. You swap shirts and say well played. That's what they did to us in Dublin.

It sounds sentimental rubbish, but what else is there?

The changing room is a tough place to be when you've lost a record that you've built up for four years."