Earls: Ireland's World Cup campaign 'inspired a nation'

Former Ireland Rugby international Keith Earls has said that the Irish team "failed" at the World Cup but nevertheless they had "inspired a nation".

The 36-year-old's final match in an Ireland jersey was Ireland's World Cup quarter-final defeat to New Zealand on 14 October.

In the first interview since his retirement, Earls said the team had "truly, truly believed" that they could have won the World Cup as a result of "the culture we had created and what we had done over the three years, some of the games we had won, some of the teams we had beat."

"We had this motto for three years, it was to inspire a nation by bringing a cup home to get an open top bus down O'Connell Street in Dublin... and ultimately, you ask any of the lads, and its harsh, but we failed, and (we) understand that even though we failed we did inspire the nation," he told Patrick Kielty on The Late Late Show.

"We wanted to go out and win it, it wasn't a cockiness from us, but as Irish teams in the past, we would have been scared to kind of say it, whereas we truly, truly believed it this time," he said.

"We had the right ingredients, but that's sport, if you have a small amount of poor discipline against a team like New Zealand then they'll punish you," he added.

Earls described the atmosphere in the dressing room after the match as "an emotional wreck".

Coach "Andy (Farrell) stood up and he spoke about myself and Johnny and I think everyone forgets about our good manager Mick Kearney, the three of us were moving on and we had some special times together, myself, Johnny and even Mick for over a decade and it was just gone in 80 minutes," he said.

"It was quite emotional and there were lots of tears from a bunch of macho mean," he added.

"It's still hurting,