Ireland and England contest a lineout © Getty Images

Enlarge

Ireland coach Joe Schmidt played down any talk of a potential Grand Slam in the wake of their 19-9 win over England on Sunday.

Ireland put in a disciplined and hugely effective showing to see off England with half-backs Jonathan Sexton and Conor Murray superb throughout. Ireland are now three from three but will have to go on the road for their final two matches in the championship, with Wales up next before finishing in Italy.

Despite their 100% record in this year's tournament, Schmidt said they will maintain their game-by-game focus.

"It's something we haven't talked about [the Grand Slam]," Schmidt said. "We just put this game into isolation and put the first two games together. A team coming of age is very difficult to quantify as you are always changing slightly.

"Today we would have had Sean O'Brien and Jamie Heaslip probably playing a full 80 minutes but instead we had Jordi Murphy and Tommy O'Donnell playing the game. Your team is always changing slightly and I'm no doubt there will be some changes through those last few games."

But despite pouring cold water on any Grand Slam talk, Schmidt was understandably pleased with the triumph and spoke of his pride at how the team rallied when England found some momentum in the final throes of the game.

"The fact we kept the quality English players off our tryline showed a lot of character in the last quarter when they started to come in swarms at us," Schmidt said. "I think the players can be very proud of their efforts along with the structure they maintained through that period."

For England coach Stuart Lancaster, he was left to bemoan his side's ill-discipline as he saw their four-match winning streak against Ireland come to an end.

"When they've got the ball we can't give away penalties because Jonny Sexton will just bang them over as he did in this case," Lancaster said. "It's a hugely difficult place to come and win. We were under no illusions over the challenge of the task.

"We established good momentum in the first game and maintained that in the second. But when you are playing against a side of the calibre of Ireland we knew it was going to be an arm wrestle decided on small margins. In games like that experience counts and we lost the key moments.

"We have to look at ourselves before we start looking at anyone else. I don't want to give the impression there was nothing positive about our performance. There was plenty. But we need to look at the things we could control in the game and that's the main area we will be addressing."

England conceded 13 penalties during the match and while that irked Andy Farrell, he was impressed by the accuracy of Ireland's kicking game.

"We struggled for possession and territory and the main part of that was because we allowed them to be there in the first place," Farrell said. "The accuracy of their kicking game was outstanding. Our ill discipline didn't allow us to get control of the game. It was discipline that cost us. The discipline issue is what we need to work on."

England's last Grand Slam was in 2003 and the wait goes on but despite the loss in Dublin, Lancaster retains hope England could yet win the championship.

When asked whether they can still win in the tournament, Lancaster said: "Absolutely. In every year there are very few Grand Slam teams. In the majority of years you end up with a team winning the Championship that has lost one game along the way.

"For us we have two games at home and it's critical we get as much out of those as we can. Ireland have two games away and Wales are still in the hunt having won at the weekend. That game [Wales v Ireland] is a big game for us. But we can't control that."