But the major talking point when this is all over is that the southern hemisphere have dominated a tournament in Europe with the semi-finalists set to be Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Argentina. That is not healthy.

Europe will have a few representatives in the last eight but they have not been impressive, and as for Ireland being one of them? We will just have to wait and see, but beating Argentina is hard enough to envisage, never mind the rest of the conditions they must meet. To be in that situation alone is a disaster and while all the talk is of things going well in training and everyone being happy that cannot be the case. What exactly it is that's wrong is the thousand dollar question.

There have been mistakes and I don't think every player in that camp is walking around with a smile on their face. There has to be a handful of players there that are annoyed because they have not had a game in this World Cup. They have been in a hotel room for a month, taking time out to hold bags and that does not help team morale. I didn't agree with selection for the Georgia game because the likes of Geordan Murphy, Neil Best, Malcolm O'Kelly and Alan Quinlan who all had something to contribute were never given a chance. It was presumed that after the Italy game, the first-choice players would be given a chance to get it right against Namibia but then it was their chance to stake a claim. That never came and they must be wondering why they were brought in the first place because, of the major nations that can afford it, Ireland have used the least number of players. If you go back over the last few years, that has always been the case and the subs have gotten very little game-time and that's a huge concern because a team is more than 15 players.

For me though, the writing has been on the wall from a long way back. I said before the tournament that confidence and momentum are a huge aspect of the game. I don't think the team has become a bad team overnight and I don't think Eddie O'Sullivan is suddenly a bad coach but going into a World Cup you read momentum and Ireland had none.

People may have read too much into the Six Nations game against England and since then everything has been collapsing. The secondstring were poor in Argentina.

There was the loss to Scotland and when they scraped past Italy that was the beginning of everyone papering over the cracks. In fairness there was an improvement against France because winning against the host nation in Paris was always going to be a huge ask but take all that as a whole. Not good enough.

There is now a huge concern for Irish rugby if they come back without a proud performance today. It's wishful thinking to say they'll get through but without a performance, there will be huge trouble.

For a lot of these guys, it's the end. They are heading into their 30s and they won't be around for the next World Cup. Ireland have to go into a redevelopment phase. This was a team that were galvanised for four years to do a job here and now. They were going to pick up a Grand Slam along the way and failed and they have failed here too.

There have not been too many new players introduced in that time and that has to change. It's time for players like Luke Fitzgerald and Stephen Ferris to come in as the union looks to 2011.

However if they don't want to look at the World Cup as a barometer of where they are in the game, then they can keep going down a cul-de-sac they have been for some time.

Brent Pope is a rugby analyst with RTE

In conversation with Ewan MacKenna