Joe Schmidt has admitted hiding away after Ireland's Rugby World Cup dreams ended in a whimper.
The New Zealander led Ireland to three Six Nations titles, including a Grand Slam, and two historic wins over his native All Blacks.
But their hopes of reaching a first ever World Cup final were damaged with a shock defeat to hosts Japan before they were sent packing by New Zealand in the quarter-finals.
It was another disappointing from Ireland on the biggest stage and Schmidt has revealed that he was nervous about the public reaction on their return from Japan.
He said on The Late Late Show: "I was disappointed. I didn't really want to meet people and have them disappointed as well.
"You know when you get off the flight you're going to walk straight into cameras that are at the airport. We'd been up at 3am to catch our flight and I didn't really catch our flight.
"You get in - and I'm not sure what I said in the interview now - but you're probably not at your peak.
"I did hide away for a while. And my wife said let's get out of town then. We went to Spain for a few days which was great."
Schmidt also said he believes Ireland started thinking about the World Cup too early and got away from the 'week to week' approach.
He said: "The only thing that we hadn't achieved, having beaten everyone, won the Slam, won Six Nations, was that World Cup and even getting to that semi-final.
"We said everything else is secondary to us getting to that World Cup final or World Cup semi-final.
"We didn't prioritise the Six Nations the way we normally would have. We were always a week to week team. Just making sure we focused on what was immediately in front of us.
"I think we started to project our thoughts too far in advance and we didn't perform well in the Six Nations. Our confidence ebbed a little bit and we lost our rhythm.
"We never quite got it back. I thought after the Scotland game that we were on an upswing and the plan was coming to fruition.
"But we were vulnerable the following week and we never really picked ourselves up."
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