SIX NATIONS RUGBY: Ireland boss Andy Farrell to look at himself first after disappointing loss to England

The visitors paid a heavy price for their sloppy start and costly errors as the chance for a second Triple Crown in three years quickly slipped away.

England surged up to second in the Guinness Six Nations table after George Ford, Elliot Daly and Luke Cowan-Dickie ran in tries in a one-sided demolition at Twickenham that saw the hosts lead 17-0 at half-time.

Ireland did hit back through a Robbie Henshaw and Andrew Porter tries at the start and end of the second half, but they were well off the mark overall.

Farrell said: "I wouldn't say we were off the pace - I think they started pretty well. No excuses though because they've started pretty well against us before and we should have been ready for that.

"We were coming here to try and win a Triple Crown and they were trying to fight to stay in the championship.

"We can assess all the bits, all the technicalities and the ramifications of accumulative errors etc, or refereeing decisions or whatever, but the reality is that they came out of the blocks hard, got on the front foot and we took a few sucker-punches.

"I need to look at myself. Were they up for it more than us? Us, going for a Triple Crown? That's my responsibility to make sure that that shouldn't happen, so I've got to look at myself first and foremost."

England boss Eddie Jones claimed his side were so dominant in their victory they could have declared at half-time.

It was a performance that had shades of the World Cup knockout wins against Australia and New Zealand last autumn and Jones warned Wales and Italy that his team have additional gears for the final two rounds.

"We played with a lot of control. We read the conditions well, read the referee well and at half-time if it was a cricket game, we could have declared," Jones said.

"We've been building up. I got the preparation wrong for the France game and apologised for that.

"We were good against Scotland - really good against Scotland in difficult conditions - and we took another step up here. We will take another step up when we play Wales on Saturday week.

"There's a lot more to come. We played tough in the first 40 minutes, probably took our foot off a little bit in the second half but Ireland were always going to get some ball.

"They were always going to get some refereeing calls and we had to defend pretty well, which we did.

"We were disappointed to give that try away at the end but we will need to be better against Wales."