Johnny Sexton admitted Ireland weren't ruthless enough as their 35-27 defeat to France handed England the Six Nations trophy.
Skipper Sexton was Ireland's saviour in Paris with his last-gasp drop goal winner in 2018 but left the pitch shaking his head when he was replaced by Ross Byrne in the 69th minute.
"I felt that they took their opportunities really well - sometimes off nothing, off our mistakes even, and we weren't ruthless enough when we had the chance," said the 35-year-old.
"We had the chance to score - a few chances to score - from five metres out.
"We had the chance to go for the try (at the end of the first half), a brave decision to try and get another try (when Sexton kicked to the corner) and we were very close but we weren't accurate enough.
"It's going to be tough to look at over the next week or so."
Needing to win by six points to win the title, Ireland went in at the break four points behind Les Bleus but badly lost momentum in the third quarter and their chance was gone on the night that Cian Healy became the sixth Irishman to reach the 100th cap mark.
"It's an amazing achievement by Cian," said Sexton.
"I wish we could have won the game today, we obviously saw the other results and knew that we had to win by more than six or else win with the bonus point, so we tried to do a mixture of it.
"We tried to make some brave calls and go for some tries, because we felt there was some space there to be exploited.
"But we weren't good enough to go and take it.
"We're looking forward to the new competition, today's going to hurt but we've got some very important players coming back for us, some new players to come in as well so I'm looking forward to bouncing back from this disappointment".
