Nora Stapleton is standing alone. Of course she isn't alone but she's politely waiting to be interviewed. Her softly spoken Donegal accent tries to lace some rationale behind this crushing defeat, all so quickly after it has transpired.

It feels cruel to be asking her anything at all. With the joy of last Tuesday’s scalping of New Zealand here comes the fall.

“It’s hard to explain at the minute because, personally, I’m feeling a bit numb. You don’t really know where that performance came from. It was a huge contrast from the New Zealand game.

“At half-time in the New Zealand match we went in feeling confident and feeling we were very much in control of the game as well whereas this time we were, ‘Right, we have to turn ourselves around.’”

That’s perhaps the ideal analogy. Last week, despite trailing 8-7 they barrelled off the field, bumping Black Ferns out of the road, reminiscent for so many of their GAA days. It was feral. It guaranteed us a second half of grit and menace and Jenny Murphy.

When we got Murphy after 46 minutes yesterday, with England leading 21-7, the game was already gone.

“We went back out and we just didn’t do it,” said Stapleton last night. “Today just wasn’t our day.”

She is being hard on herself. England were magnificent and will surely go on to beat Canada in the final after France, much like their men, stumbled at the hurdle everyone expected them to clear with ease.

“As players we are definitely not happy with that kind of performance. It’s not the Irish team that everybody is used to seeing, it is not how we play.

“As players we are disappointed and we want to make amends for that.”

At least atonement can come within four days with an improved performance against the desperately distraught hosts.

“We know we can play much better than that and in four days’ time we want to show people what we can do. When you are feeling numb or low coming out of a game like this it is nice to have another game. It is a huge game against top notch opposition.”

Typical of the woman, Ireland’s outhalf feels for those who had followed them on this journey.

“They were magnificent tonight and you could hear them in the crowd. We were more disappointed for them.”

Fiona Coghlan has been the corner stone of an Irish scrum that tore New Zealand asunder and also crushed a big Kazakhstan pack.

It went the other way here. Rochelle Clark, England's massive loosehead, had the squeeze on Ailis Egan from the outset. The great white scrum twisted and turned Ireland, creating a surge of confidence that flowed through their ranks.

“We just didn’t seem to get any power through,” says Coghlan.

“I thought our hit was quite good but we had no power coming through. I think we weren’t working as a unit, we were there as individuals, and that was a theme of the game; we lacked unity across the park.

“That was disappointing.”

There are other regrets for Ireland’s greatest ever rugby captain.

“We stood back and let them run at us too much. There were too many missed tackles. We said we couldn’t let that happen but we did. Credit to them they identified where we are sitting back and exploited it.”

Then the lights go out in the press room. Pitch black. An English voice starts singing happy birthday.

They come back on. We move along, into the darkness.

We didn’t attack this Parisian night, but we find other Irish folk in mourning.

No, Nora Stapleton is not alone.