What you have to remember is that this Irish team was very confident coming to Twickenham.

Two years ago they won there and they've won the last three against England so they were full of confidence and have some world-class players in the likes of Brian O'Driscoll and Paul O'Connell driving this Ireland team.

I was happy that at least we finished with somewhere near a performance that you want to see from England.

It wasn't by any means perfect, there is still a lot to work on, but it was by no means the performances that we saw against France and Scotland.

Everyone contributed, it seems the side set their gameplan to be a little bit simpler. Rugby is quite a simple game and I think England overcomplicated things in the early part of the tournament.

Overall, the players and the management will be disappointed with England's tournament and so will the supporters.

I think England have received quite an excess of wins and successes over the last few years and everyone thinks that it will continue.

However, you've got to remember it's a very new and different side we've got at the moment who are not particularly having a great time of it with their performances so it's very much an uphill battle for them.

I do think it was another step along the line of the development for the 2007 World Cup but I don't think the performances against Scotland and definitely France were. In those games I thought England had gone backwards.

As long as England can continue this vein where they are improving all the time, they'll be there or thereabouts for the World Cup.

Whether it'll be enough, they're not giving themselves that much time as there's only 15 months to go, we'll have to see.

I think it's been a great RBS 6 Nations tournament. We said right at the beginning of the year it was going to be the most open and evenly contested championship for a number of years and it truly was.

Scotland beat France and England, which would have been unthinkable if you had said that before the tournament, while Italy ran nearly every team very close.

They were very unlucky to lose against Ireland, against England they were competitive for most of the game until they lost it at the death, they drew with Wales and they only lost 13-10 to Scotland and were in the lead for most of the game.

I don't think there's been a tremendous amount of skill and great tries scored but I think it's been an open tournament and that adds a great deal of excitement, drama and passion to the competition.