Outclassed and distinctly second best in every facet of the game, Scott Bemand admitted it was "a tough day at the office" as Ireland fell to a 88-10 defeat to England.
The Red Roses, unbeaten in the championship since 2018, ran in 14 tries on an afternoon to forget for the visitors.
Ireland had harboured hopes of an improved showing against the number one ranked team, but will have very little, bar their first points against England in four meetings, to take away from their Guinness Women's Six Nations clash in London.
"A tough day at the office," said the head coach.
"But where the group was, where they are moving towards, we’ll take our learnings.
"We’re either winning or learning, they are an honest group. We’ll work hard at it. We’ve got a really big game to get excited about next week [against Scotland].
"We’ve come up against England, the market leaders at the minute in world rugby. It’s an occasion we’ve got to learn to play.
"We’ll dust ourselves down and come back better."
It only took seven minutes for England to break down the Irish defence and they appeared to score at will after that, never taking their foot off the opposition throat.
"The momentum started moving away from us," added the former England lead coach.
"At times we looked a little bit shell-shocked. That’s fine. You see teams that went on to become good teams playing these occasions, finals, semi-finals, big games.
"Today was a big game for a youthful group. Would we have predicted a margin like that? Probably not.
"Unfortunately, it’s how it went and there were some bits we could definitely control better."
After a first championship win in two years against Wales last weekend, Bemand said that their second biggest defeat to England, during which they missed 61 tackles, doesn’t ruin their body of work.
"The tackles are there, you’ve got to make them," he said.
"You have to work hard, fast and early to put yourself in the best position to make those tackles.
"I think the occasion probably got away from us a little bit. With a young group that experience it’s another step.
"I’ve every confidence in our ability to learn from it.
"The momentum we've gained from a month in camp and games previous to this doesn't dissipate in one performance.
"We’ve got a great opportunity next week so we’ll front-foot it and fix up the bits we need to and we’ll go after the relevant pieces of the game next week.
"We’ve come second best today but we won’t dwell on it long."
