Not good at anything, does this England team need a brain transplant?

English rugby pundits have spent the week abasing themselves before Ireland's greatness. Hope has been entirely abandoned.

Andy Goode has implored his countrymen to try and keep it below 50. Matt Dawson declared himself optimistic - of witnessing an Irish Grand Slam sealed on home soil.

Stuart Barnes said England would likely throw everything at Ireland before admitting that everything isn't very much at the moment (Barnesy confirmed on Second Captains' he had a substantial bet on Ireland at the beginning of the tournament so one imagines he'll be happy either way).

There's no motive discernible in any of this. This isn't coy Declan Kidney-style flattery, deliberately pitched to avoid riling up the opposition, perhaps even laying the grounds for a trap. That sort of thing wouldn't be in their make-up at all. They don't really do ambushes. This is an entirely guileless pessimism.

Historically, English rugby writers have been full of casual disdain for Irish rugby and not always without reason.

It was Will Greenwood's father Dickie, national team coach back in the 1980s, who famously observed that Irish rugby was in need of a brain transplant.

Somewhere along the way, Irish rugby found their life-changing neurosurgeon and now it's England who look frazzled and clueless.

Their newly installed head coach prefaced the tournament by announcing that the team he inherited "weren't good at anything". Their performances since have vindicated this verdict.

In the wake of England's humiliation against France, there was a division between those inclined to blame Eddie Jones for leading English rugby to this sorry pass and those who insisted that the man himself would never actually have presided over such a disaster.

The consensus among the