Joe Schmidt admitted he was left broken by Ireland's World Cup quarter-final surrender to defending champions New Zealand.
The 53-year-old looked shell-shocked as he attended his last-ever post-match press conference as Ireland manager, his tenure ending with a 46-14 drubbing in Tokyo Stadium.
While Ireland have achieved a series of firsts under Schmidt, his legacy will include two last eight defeats in the World Cup - and it had been his mission to guide his team to the last four and make history in the process.
“You tend to carry your scars a lot more than your successes and those scars are deep," said Schmidt.
“That’s why I’m a little bit broken. I think when I get some distance to reflect on maybe 75 Test matches and we’ve won 74 percent of them, there have been some incredibly good days.
“I don’t think they get washed away by two defeats in days where we are incredibly disappointed.
"I felt we had good reason four years ago when we lost our leadership (including Paul O'Connell and Johnny Sexton) before the quarter-final (against Argentina).
“Today, we just met a team who I think are number one in the world for a reason.
“If you’re not on the money, you’re going to be incredibly disappointed - and I am."
The Kiwi ,who had six years in the hot-seat after three years with Leinster, added: "This group of players have achieved a lot and that’s the one thing that remains and it continues to remain elusive (a World Cup semi-final) so we’re incredibly disappointed.
“Heartbroken wouldn’t be too far away from how I feel and how the players feel right now.
“Because right after the November series when we played the All Blacks last year we decided to make sure that this was our target.
“Maybe it consumed us a little bit and we got distracted from our game-to-game focus.”
Ireland ran up a series of uncharacteristic errors against the All Blacks and it cost them dearly, including a massive 17 turnovers against the most dangerous counter-attacking side in the sport.
“Yeah, I don’t really have an excuse for it or a reason for it," Schmidt said.
"On the night we can’t afford to give the All Blacks access points like we did.
"They’re good enough to win games without us inviting them in and that was incredibly disappointing.
“I think we were a little bit flat on the back of having a few niggles during the week. We weren’t quite sure what the team would be until Thursday.
“I felt that we needed to get off to a good start to build a bit of confidence, and when that didn’t happen I always felt that we would be a bit vulnerable".
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