After what must have been a restless night's sleep, during which no amount of the black stuff would have softened the postmatch blues, Irish rugby awoke to its nightmare scenario. Yet another one that got away, and four weeks of staring down a Parisian abyss. About the most common question doing the rounds on Saturday night was: where do we go from here?
The scenario is so bleak that, collectively, this Irish squad will not even be in the mood to pick themselves up for a few days. But, eventually, they must.
There are no simplistic cures. Sack the coach? And so we undo the last year and go all the way back to the start again? Sack the manager? What would that achieve. Make wholesale changes to the team? Irish rugby has been down that road so many times before that it's become part of the problem, not the answer.
Orchestrate a palace coup, trim down the IRFU executive and get some full-time professional people to run the show and get the infrastructures right? Now there's a good idea. But regarding the short-term - Paris in four weeks against a rejuvenated French side - that wouldn't achieve a whole lot.
The coach himself was as embittered as anybody afterwards, the profligate kicking of ball away in the last 10 minutes prompting his post-match comment on RTE: "I'm mot quite sure whose gameplan that is but it's nothing to do with me."
As post-match comments go, it was a disarmingly candid and honest remark, although it portrayed a seemingly disaffected coach who wanted to distance himself from his players. Some of them duly interpreted the remark in this light, not that that will bother Ashton much, but whatever disharmony it may have created is likely to be smoothed over in time.
"I was specifically talking about the last 10 minutes, not the overall gameplan," he asserted last night. "Kicking the ball away like that has never been part of the agenda of any team I've coached. But the comment needs to be taken in context." As if to show a sense of solidarity, he added: "We're all in this together."
"In fact, we did many things well and Gregor Townsend admitted to me that we produced some things amongst our backs that he had never seen before and caused them real problems. I think even the Scots would accept that ultimately we did more to lose the game. It's frustrating. But we've just got to carry on."
Starting with a meeting of the selectors in the next day to outline their plans for the intervening four weeks. "It's not ideal. I'd much rather be playing again in a fortnight for the sake of continuity, but that's the hand we've been dealt. We hope to have a session on Wednesday week but that's partly dependent on rearranged English club games."
They probably won't pick the side to play France for another two or three weeks. Some players not available for Saturday's game might come into the equation, such as Conor McGuinness, Rob Henderson or Jonathan Bell, but as Ashton admitted: "A - they've got to prove their fitness and B - they've got to prove they're in form." Nor is four weeks much time to do so.
In reality the options are limited. Ireland don't have a centre with some real bite and pace, like Brendan Mullin. Perhaps the selectors will start considering the converted Garryowen outside centre Killian Keane even more closely, but beyond that, the nucleus of this side is the best available and capable of better.
A couple of points for this Irish team on Saturday, one refereeing decision another way, is the equivalent of a psychological mile. They were well prepared, they let themselves down with basic errors in a non-vintage game, and they lost their way at the end. But the selectors might as well stick with the vast bulk of this side. The pack could even remain intact, with McGuinness the strongest case for a return outside of that.
Getting this team to correct some of the errors of Saturday's ways is probably a better option to coming up with yet another new one.
