By 4.30, the hottest ticket in town felt cold. By that time, Lansdowne Road was both sunny and funereal. The day felt wrong. We needed mud and mist or something intangible. Quietly and obediently, we sat through a lesson in the oldest stadium in the world. England imposed their vision of the future through a 42-6 thumping.

Some truths were learned. Bravery can take a team of talent but limited experience only so far. Mournful choruses of The Fields of Athenry can take you only so far. Fifty years of wanting can take you only so far.

A small, already forgotten but extraordinary moment from after the match: England, solid and decent and happy, have already spilled the champagne and stood in front of the fireworks that looked plain wrong in the bright sunlight. The teams have exited the dressing-rooms for the last time this season and one by one begin to show their faces in the corporate tent. The English bus, sleek and gleaming black metal with a red rose printed on the side, has pulled up, and as the heroes emerge their bags are lifted from their shoulder.

Big Mal O'Kelly, perhaps Ireland's player of the season, comes out alone. Besieged by kids, Mal obligingly stops and begins to scribble his name. He looks weary. Someone comes and lifts his bag and moves towards the visitors' bus. Mal looks up in concern and disbelief.

"You goin' on the English bus?"

Wrong question at the wrong time on the wrong day. The all-whites have had enough their own way today.

"No I'm not goin' on the f***in' English bus," says O'Kelly, half laughing and half annoyed. He retrieves his bag and makes his way to where his team-mates are for what will surely be a long and emotional night.

In the yard behind the stand are heroes from England's past. Crisply, Clive Woodward shakes hands with Rob Andrew as he moves towards family and friends. Jerry Guscott purrs through a crowd. What is left of the mass Irish army surveys this scene with mute interest. Nothing left to do but fill the camera with such snapshots.

It was meant to have been different. The scenes of a Sunday last October, when Lansdowne threw an impromptu party in the gloom to celebrate the scalping of Australia, seem a lifetime ago.

This was everything that day was not. This was clean and clinical and dazzling. It was like staring at the sun for too long.

The English players, polite and helpful and likeable, go about their business because, for them, winning has become a business. Richard Hill sips Lucozade and talks to anybody who wishes. Graham Rowntree sips a pint of Guinness. Josh Lewsey makes his way up to a fan he seems to know in a wheelchair and they start chatting about the game. Jonny Wilkinson is ushered through by security like they have heard there is a sniper in the stands, but that isn't his style and he too stands around, signing programmes, shaking hands.

It is not the scene that was dreamt of when people tried to sell their cars, their kids, their very souls to lay hands on a ticket. Lansdowne Road has been tamed and gentrified. The cup is going across the Irish Sea.

There is nothing much more to do but lock up.