Skipper Rory Best admitted that Ireland only had themselves to blame after a 22-9 loss to Wales in Cardiff.
England will claim the Six Nations title if they beat Scotland tomorrow and Ireland must regroup to take on the Red Rose in Dublin next week with only pride on the line.
“We’re bitterly disappointed,” Best told RTÉ Sport.
“When we take a look back we’ll largely have ourselves to blame.
“Wales are a quality side but at the same time we made a lot of errors and had chances to get in front. Bar when it was 6-5 we never really got in front to dominate the game the way we’d like on the scoreboard.
“[We had] a few chances in their 22 that we didn’t convert.
“We’ll have to take a look back and see. They put us under pressure, but we’ve got to deal with that a bit better, we put a bit of ball down, it wasn’t really like us.”
"We had chances and let them off the hook" Rory Best talks to Clare after a disappointing loss to Wales #rterugby pic.twitter.com/zGSxxj8nUh
— RTÉ Rugby (@RTErugby) March 10, 2017
Ireland did have chances to regain the initiative when trailing 15-9 but lacked a cutting edge in attack.
Best added: “We’re normally more clinical than that. To not score for us is very disappointing.
“It’s devastating, we came here expecting to win, we knew we had the quality to win. We knew it was going to be a really tough ask and tough game but we’ll look back at that on Sunday night and we’ll be disappointed that the score didn’t reflect [the game].
“The charge-down [for Jamie Roberts’ late try] as we’re trying to win a game but at the same time we had chances and let them off the hook, credit to them they took their chances.
“No one is more disappointed than the boys in the changing room, we know that there was a lot of talk about this last game [against England] but we’ll have to dust ourselves down and have to try to win a game to finish as high up the championship as we can.”
