The difficulty with rigid systems is players lose the ability to think on their feet, which kills spontaneity

Once again the wheat has been separated from the chaff at a World Cup and Ireland have been swept away in the clean-up. At the ninth time of asking, despite a professional model rated as best-in-class, even by the world superpowers, we have been left on the outside looking in.

It’s an ongoing source of embarrassment that we remain the only one of the five home nations never to play in a World Cup semi-final. From the moment Ireland lost to Japan, the prospect of breaking that sequence became less likely given we had been put on a collision course to meet New Zealand.