Joe Schmidt knows us as a nation too well by now to go around banning talk of a Grand Slam. But he still wouldn't take the bait when we mentioned it to him post-match. Two more wins will get him there but for now he's content to do a little swerve and leave it be.

“No,” he smiled. “I’ll wait for Drico’s tweet to put the pressure on me. I think we decided we’d park everything for 24 hours and get a bit of recovery before we springboard ourselves forward. We have an overnight camp in Belfast in the middle of the week and that’s where we’ll start to look ahead. But just for once, we’re going to enjoy the moment and take a deep breath.”

The game ended with Ireland in their own 22 and England on the offensive. Forced to single out something other than the result to take away with him, the Ireland coach pointed to the fact that their line held.

“With the quality of the English players, I just felt that the fact that we kept them off our try line was excellent. I thought we showed a lot of character in that last quarter when they were coming in swarms. The players can be very proud of the effort and the structure they maintained in that period.”

Robbie Henshaw's man of the match performance was a particular delight. The new breed are serving Schmidt's team well, from Henshaw to early sub Tommy O'Donnell to Jordi Murphy, completing only his second Six Nations 80 minutes. These are Schmidt's players, promoted by him to the top table and taking their chances as they come.

“I thought Robbie was going to sneak through in the first half. He got through on a nice ball from Tommy O’Donnell. It was a little bit bizarre because Tommy hadn’t really run the play a lot really. He came on for Seán very early. And Jordi Murphy had a huge game as well.

“I thought Tommy had a super game, contributed massively and with him giving that offload, I thought Robbie might sneak through. But instead, he created that try out of nothing with Conor Murray and I thought it was an exceptional finish.

“A team coming of age is very difficult to quantify. Your team is always changing slightly. Today we would normally have had Jamie Heaslip and Seán O’Brien playing 80 minutes but instead we had Tommy O’Donnell and Jordi Murphy playing big parts. So is the squad maturing? I think you’d have to say that.”

Schmidt said outhalf Jonathan Sexton was withdrawn in the 53rd minute as a precautionary measure.

Sexton was replaced by Ian Madigan moments after nailing a touchline conversion to stretch Ireland's lead to 16 points following Henshaw's maiden Test match try.

However Schmidt doesn’t fear the hamstring injury which forced Sexton off is a serious one.

“We felt that the position it was in the game, we felt it was pretty good to get him off.

“He definitely felt it kicking the conversion which he managed to strike superbly, thankfully. As a result of that we thought it was probably the safer option to get him off the pitch.”

O’Brien was also replaced after taking a knock to the head following one of his trademark bullocking runs from deep and he will now undergo head injury assessment (HIA).

Schmidt said: “I think it might have been a head-to-head collision. It was hard to see in the replay to be honest but he’s going to go through the HIA protocols.

“He’s in there now, he’s a little bit grumpy because he couldn’t see out the match and he missed a big part of it but at the same time he’s feeling relatively well.”

There was praise for Ireland from England coach Stuart Lancaster, while assistant Andy Farrell paid tribute to the kicking game of Sexton, especially in the first half of the match.

“Well done to Ireland in the win. It was a tight Test match, small margins. Trailing by 19-3 gave us a big hill to climb. Ireland put in the performance, deserved to win,” said Lancaster.

“I think there was an 8-4 penalty count at half-time. Ireland played a very good kicking territory game. They put a lot of ball in our half. I thought we were still in it and hadn’t really got our game going today

“The late surge showed what we can do. There were a couple of key moments in the first half and in the second half but we played some good football and looked dangerous. Pity we didn’t get that try at the end. It would have been a fair reflection of the game.

Lancaster, though, was sure that England could still pull a championship out of this tournament and pointed to the fact that Grand Slams are hard to find. England have two games in Twickenham, while Ireland’s remaining matches against Wales and Scotland are both away. Can you still win, Lancaster was asked?

“Absolutely,” said the England coach. “In every year there are very few Grand Slam teams. We’ve two games at home and Ireland have two games away.

We were under no illusions of the challenge of the task. When you are playing against the calibre of Ireland and how many good players they have, it was going to be an arm wrestle. Experience counts and that showed I think.”

Farrell, true to his north of England directness was more succinct

“Territory and possession we struggled,” said Farrell. “I must pay Ireland a lot of credit how they played the game. Their kicking game in the first half was exceptional, on the money.”