It says much about Saturday's latest England-Ireland mismatch that at 38-18 and with 73 minutes gone, the Irish at Twickenham would gladly have headed for the exits. For even that would have been an absolute steal.
Alas, this bedraggled Irish team probably felt the same, and the ensuing flourish of tries for debutantes Matt Tindall and Ben Cohen (his second) deservedly brought up the English half-century. Ireland do seem to make a habit of granting opposing debutantes try-scoring starts to their Test careers, don't they?
In any event, so another unwanted record (most points conceded in the championship) was, um, improved. Three years on from that 46-6 rout in Dublin against the same opposition, Irish supporters must be entitled to wonder if any progress is being made.
Of course, whatever progress Ireland may make, the rest aren't standing still either, and this was the best England performance in the fixture during their sequence of seven straight wins.
Perhaps it is some consolation that Ireland had the inner resolve to make large chunks of the second-half competitive and manufacture a couple of tries, for at times there were whiffs of the bad old days with Irish players hiding in rucks or avoiding being caught on camera as another English try-scorer sauntered over the line.
And given England's ruthless capacity for running up centuries from similar positions, you'd have to say that when Neil Back's try made it 32-3 straight after the resumption, this was a 60 or 70-pointer in the making.
Yet the nagging suspicion remained that this was partially because England eased off, possibly out of boredom. It was clear that, like the Twickenham crowd and the majority of their media, England hadn't really rated Ireland's challenge. It will be nice, said Clive Woodward, of the next fixture against France, to have a crack at "a big team". Ouch.
Against that, the Irish team and management, and a good portion of the media and travelling supporters, not to mention Michael Lynagh, had expected a biggish Irish display in reaction to the World Cup. It never happened.
The notion that the team lacked those cliched virtues of pride and passion seems unlikely. If anything, they looked too wound up or too uptight when they came on to the pitch. By comparison, England's players looked relaxed and, most of all, confident.
It was never a contest, right from the kick-off. On the rare occasions Ireland had any chance to establish some sort of platform, a curious attempt to maul a lineout from inside their own half was unceremoniously driven back by the English eight to win a turnover.
When the midfield and outside defence gamely forced England back at one juncture, with O'Driscoll hounding them, the awesome Lawrence Dallaglio immediately grasped the leather and set off at Humphreys to put Ireland on the back foot.
Otherwise, Ireland scarcely had their hands on the ball. It was like the famous quote from Liam Tuohy when his Dundalk side had been beaten 9-0: "It wasn't fair," he said, "they wouldn't let us play with their ball."
And with Ireland confined to less than a quarter of the possession until the game was long since lost, no player can look good. Equally, by the sheer law of averages, tackles are going to be missed too.
That said, even when Ireland made their tackles they rarely prevented England from offloading, and invariably the support runners were there in closer proximity than Ireland's. A telling comparison was David Humphreys's 53rd-minute halfbreak and show of the ball: the support runners were about 10 yards behind Humphreys and as useful to him as a T-shirt in Antarctica.
England hardly made one single handling error in the first half-hour or so, and if the ball did go to ground they hunted in such tight little packs that they immediately snaffled it up.
Adopting a radically different approach to their heads-down, forward-orientated domination at Lansdowne Road a year ago, this performance was more in keeping with England's initial World Cup campaign and Woodward's all-singing, all-dancing dictum.
Once they got beyond the first or second phase, numbers seemed almost irrelevant, as was seen when Cohen scored their first try on his opposite wing. They seemed to have far greater ball skills and pace throughout their ranks, though sheer confidence in what they were doing was possibly the biggest factor.
They used the full width of the pitch, back and forth, remorselessly and had the pivotal playmakers in Matt Dawson, Jonny Wilkinson, Mike Catt, Back and the roving Austin Healey - winger cum auxiliary out-half for starters - to explore the perimeters of Twickenham. They made the pitch look big.
More than anything, it was the greater depth of their runners which emphasised the class divide. Even their hooker, Phil Greening, ran some great angles from deep, and any chink of daylight in the green line was exposed.
Admittedly, for however good England were, Ireland's defence didn't maintain the in-your-face trademark of the Gatland reign. Brave and constant though the tackles were, the Irish line didn't push up onto the gain line quite as much as they might, and there was scarcely a turnover tackle until Trevor Brennan bear-hugged Dallaglio, of all people.
Furthermore, by comparison, Ireland's running across the line seemed too flat and lacked depth. There was the scarcely credible sequence of 17 phases Ireland put together around the hour mark, during which they inched backwards and then forwards from about halfway to inside the English 10-metre line before Matt Perry robbed Humphreys. With the out-of-touch Tom Tierney adding to the waiting game, Ireland seemed almost to be deliberately playing more ponderously.
As with the mini second-half fightback, and a micro mini at that, individually there wasn't much for the Irish to take home with them. Opinions varied on him, but Kieron Dawson worked like a Trojan, surely led the tackle count and, had there been real pace out wide, might have claimed two try-scoring skip passes on the rare occasions he was allowed to go forward.
The set-pieces were okay, Malcolm O'Kelly worked hard too and Brian O'Driscoll showed some touches of class. But that was about it.
Five or six changes seem probable, but there's no quick fix.
Scoring sequence
12: Wilkinson pen - 3-0 15: Wilkinson pen - 6-0 18: Cohen try, Wilkinson con - 13-0 31: Healy try, Wilkinson con - 20-0 34: Humphreys pen - 20-3 38: Healy try - 25-3
Half-time: - 25-3
43: Back try, Wilkinson con - 32-3 48: Maggs try - 32-8 51: Humphreys pen - 32-11 54: Wilkinson pen - 35-11 68: Wilkinson pen - 38-11 73: Galwey try, Humphreys con - 38-18 75: Tindall try - 43-18 81: Cohen try, Wilkinson con - 50-18
Full-time: - 50-12
England: M Perry (Bath); A Healey (Leicester), M Tindall (Bath), M Catt (Bath), B Cohen (Northampton); J Wilkinson (Newcastle), M Dawson (Northampton, capt); J Leon- ard (Harlequins), P Greening (Sale), P Vickery (Gloucester), G Archer (Bristol), S Shaw (Wasps), R Hill (Saracens), N Back (Leicester), L Dallaglio (Wasps). Replacements: I Balshaw (Bath) for Perry (71 mins), T Wood- man (Gloucester) for Leonard (71 mins), M Corry (Leicester) for Shaw (77 mins).
Ireland: C O'Shea (London Irish); J Bishop (London Irish), B O'Driscoll (Blackrock College), M Mullins (Young Munster), K Maggs (Bath); D Humphreys (Dungannon), T Tierney (Garryowen); P Clohessy (Young Munster), K Wood (Garryowen, capt), P Wallace (Saracens), R Casey (Blackrock College), M O'Kelly (St Mary's College), D O'Cuinneagain (Ballymena), K Dawson (London Irish), A Foley (Shannon). Replacements: M Galwey (Shannon) for Casey (half-time), T Brennan (St Mary's College) for O'Cuinneagain (48 mins), G Dempsey (Terenure College) for O'Shea (48 mins).
Referee: S Walsh (New Zealand).
