Dave Kilcoyne couldn't recognise his team in the performance produced by Ireland in Tokyo on Saturday.
"The amount of handling errors was unacceptable," said the Munster loosehead. "I don't think we've had that many handling errors in a game, ever.
"It's not what we're about. It's not what the team has become accustomed to over the last few years.
"New Zealand put us under so much pressure, and you've got to look to that as well. They forced a lot of those handling errors.
“We didn't really throw any shots early on - and against a side like New Zealand you have to.
"They really capitalised early on and after that we were chasing, and they put us to the sword.
"When you're chasing you're probably not playing your best rugby and New Zealand take full credit with their defence and linespeed.
"They kept taking their chances. Unfortunately, we came out the wrong end of it."
As Rory Best revealed, the dressing-room was a deathly quiet place afterwards.
"Yeah, as you'd expect because so much work goes into it," said Kilcoyne, who came on early in the second half for Cian Healy. "It's a very down dressing-room, as you can imagine.
"You look at how much time and effort goes in to getting to a World Cup quarter-finaI.
"So much preparation, physically, mentally, emotionally. Your whole family, everyone makes sacrifices.
"I think back to when we started pre-season - such gruelling sessions, such tough games to get to this point, and then to get that result is bitterly disappointing.
"It's really gut-wrenching but unfortunately in professional sport, you've got to take the highs with the lows.There are incredible highs and unfortunately this is an incredible low for all of us.
"We'll just have to take a couple of weeks off and get back to club rugby. We'll analyse it when we get back into camp.
"It's about how you handle the lows. You've got to dust yourself down, because you're back into club rugby soon and we've a lot of massive games coming up for Munster.
"That's the reality of it, so you've got to move on.
"I'll have to analyse the team's performance and my own contribution to it. You look at the positives, the negatives and areas you need to work on but, fortunately and unfortunately, you go straight back to club rugby.
"You don't have too much time to beat ourselves up, though this is gut-wrenching now."
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