It was a little bit stunning that he needed to say that, but the commentary that has been offered since the beginning of this year’s Six Nations presumably left him feeling it was something that was necessary.

After the November Series — with the defeat of New Zeal a glorious scalp — Irish rugby supporters were talking of a potential World Cup success.

That made sense. The right to talk of ultimate glory was earned by the efforts of the team across 2018. A Grand Slam, a series win in Australia, and the All Blacks slain offered evidence that Ireland deserved their rating as the Number Two team in the world.

More than that, the strength in depth created by Joe Schmidt meant that they were entering a World Cup year in unprecedented shape.

The power of the Irish provinces in the months of December and January fed into the idea of Irish rugby surfing the crest of a wave.

And then came the Six Nations and the opening fixture at home to England.

So confident were Irish rugby supporters that many of them didn’t even bother putting down their pints and getting into their seats until the English game was in motion.

And when the match turned against Ireland, the atmosphere in the stadium was dismal — there’s more noise in the UCD library in the middle of the exam period.

It was as if a sense of entitlement had settled on a public who had quickly become accustomed only to winning.

Defeat was a shock to the system, no doubt about that.

And in the media, there has been a tone to the analysis that is short term and, in places, lacking in perspective.

How is it that five matches in seven weeks have led to claims that the team is done, that many players are over the hill, that Schmidt is a control freak who suffocates the players, that Sexton’s attitude is unnecessarily snarky, and so on?

Is there not an alternative, longer view to be taken?

It is true that Ireland were well beaten in both of the big matches they played but, as Joe Schmidt said after the Wales loss: “We’ll be the first to put our hands up and say that that’s not as good as we want to be. We’ll be the first to take our hats off and acknowledge the performance that Wales put in today. And then we’ll reflect, rebuild and go forward.”

Schmidt reinforced this point, continuing: “And we will grow a bit from this. We haven’t been catastrophic but we haven’t been as good as we needed to be. We’ve lost three Tests in our last 26. But to lose today is really tough.”

It is hard to get away from the sense that the team management were looking out beyond the Six Nations and on over to Japan — they were evidently taking a longer view.

And, in this, you can see how the Six Nations served a purpose: Firstly, it provided another building block in the making of a squad that can bring Ireland further than the quarter-finals in a World Cup for the first time in history.

After all, some 36 players were used in the five matches. Players were moved in and moved out, some were given their first outings in the Six Nations, others were reintroduced after an extended absence.

It is true that you can only bring 31 players to a World Cup, but there is a fair chance that Ireland will end up playing 35 or 36 players in the course of the tournament in Japan. The inevitable injuries that will happen in the first matches will dictate that players will be flown across two continents and dropped in to play at short notice.

This Six Nations was a fine test run for how that might work. That it ended in defeat means there are obvious lessons to be learned. Joe Schmidt and the coaches around him have shown time and again that they learn from experience and deliver on those lessons.

Secondly, the longer view on the capacity of this team is one of overwhelming success. In the aftermath of the game, Schmidt pointed out: “We’ve won 23 of our last 26 Test matches, we’ve finished third in the Six Nations; once upon a time that was’t the catastrophe that it is today for Ireland. The fact we’ve won three of the previous five (championships) makes it less than it should be.”

The upside of the three matches that were won is that Ireland beat Italy with a weakened team, beat Scotland on the road in a performance that was absolutely hardnosed and then hammered France. That first 40 minutes against France was suffocating in a way that underlined the abilities of the team.

There can be no denying that Ireland were outplayed by both England and Wales, but neither match feels as comprehensive as the scorelines suggest. Indeed, in the England game, Ireland had recovered from England’s whirlwind start to take the lead approaching half-time before a freakish bounce undid Jacob Stockdale for a try which set England up for the second half.

And in that second half, it was only very late on that the score got away from Ireland.

Against Wales, the match unraveled after Ireland had narrowly failed to register tries early in the game. Wales deserved to win, of course, but they didn’t win by shredding Ireland in a rout — Ireland went a long way towards beating themselves with a few key mistakes and were whistled off the pitch in the first half. These two things allowed Wales to kick the penalties that pushed them out of reach.

Looking on from the outside — as a civilian who claims no expertise — it does not seem that there is anything with Ireland that is not eminently fixable. Also from the outside, it looks as if Ireland saw this competition in terms of preparation for a World Cup.

In other words, the management sought to build their squad and did not prioritise winning the competition.

That is not to say that they chose to lose to Wales and England, rather to say that they looked at both of those matches in the context of next autumn’s World Cup.

That is a perspective that must matter when it comes to the fine margins at the elite level of a game where so much is decided by so little.

Schmidt was surely right when he said he thought the genuine supporter would still “be 100% behind us”.

There can be no doubt that he has earned that support. More to the point, he has earned the right to be trusted to get it right.

And so have the players who have achieved so much in recent years. Several are clearly out of form. That does not matter now. All that matters is what happens in Japan in the autumn.

Paul Rouse is associate professor of history at UCD.