After living with the pain of World Cup defeat for almost four months, Hugo Keenan is glad Ireland get a quick shot at redemption next Saturday.
Heavy favourites coming into the game, Andy Farrell's side went down 23-22 to England with Marcus Smith's late dropgoal sealing their first win over Ireland in five attempts.
With Grand Slam dreams dashed, the defending champions will now turn their focus to Scotland knowing any sort of victory will clinch a sixth Guinness Six Nations crown.
Their most recent loss prior to Saturday came at the quarter-final stage in France when New Zealand edged a thriller 28-24 and it felt like a knock-out punch for many of the players.
However, this round-four defeat gives them the opportunity to end the campaign on a high with the triple crown-chasing Scots arriving to Dublin the day before St Patrick's Day.
"The beauty in this one is that we have got a shot of redemption, it wasn't a final [against England] although you are nearly treating it like one," said Keenan, who had to play most of the game on the wing after an early injury to Calvin Nash.
"We have got an opportunity to bounce back and to do it at home in front of our fans, our families or friends, and our brilliant support.
"That's a lucky opportunity and a privilege to have and it is one that probably we haven't had too many opportunities to do in the past so I think we are all going to have to dust ourselves down and get excited and I am sure we will.
"It will be a tough week but I think we will be ready for it and looking forward to it.
"That's the challenge, that is the beauty of the competition, you lose a game but you can win the tournament still. I think you have to, I suppose, take learnings from previous losses, take learnings from this loss and move on quickly.
"I don't think we can drop our heads, feel too sorry for ourselves because we are in the position that we wanted to come the end of the tournament.
"Obviously, not the ideal one but it is still there to be won and that's exciting for me and for the team.
"We have to look forward to that and relish the opportunity. And it is a challenge, I suppose to me personally, my team-mates and the squad as a whole as to how we can regroup and come together tighter and regroup and gather ourselves and go and finish the job properly."
It's a sentiment that Josh van der Flier (above) agrees with. The Leinster flanker was one of Ireland's best performers at Twickenham.
"The dream of every team every year in Six Nations is to be on for a Grand Slam and that was obviously the overriding goal but to win a championship is close to as good," said the 2022 World Rugby player of the year.
"I'll have to get over that now, as a team we’ll review it. That normally helps a good bit, once you have it reviewed, you go through your mistakes and then it’s just ramping it up for Scotland."
England were the better team on the day and Ireland were, as Farrell said, "disjointed", but Van der Flier felt that his side did many things right.
"We worked hard, it was disappointing to concede early, I guess," he said.
"But I thought the work on collisions throughout the team was pretty good, there was some unbelievable hits. They carried really hard and yeah, it wasn't for lack effort.
"Towards the end it felt like we were almost over-working but I think we can take incredible pride.
"I don't think it's one of those games... I've played games before of the years where we didn't really put the effort in, we didn't really turn up.
"But I thought we did, I thought we worked really hard and it was just accuracies here and there that were the difference and a good England team."
Keenan (above) returned to the 15 shirt after missing the win over Wales with a knee injury, however, he said that he takes little personal satisfaction from his own performance after a defeat.
"Not particularly. No, like, I’ll be as critical as anyone on myself now, especially after one as hurting as that," he said.
"Yeah, it’s not ideal having been out for the last game and whatnot, but you have to step up pretty quick, [not] have any excuses.
"You can’t let that affect your performance. I’m certainly not looking at my own performance, I’m looking at the team result."
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