It’s been seven long years since England last lost a championship game at Twickenham, and a cheer will go up from John O’Groats to Sicily after a determined Irish side exposed some glaring weaknesses within the newly-crowned rugby kings.

England’s famous forwards collapsed under the immense pressure put upon them by the Irish pack, and the running repairs performed by England coach Clive Woodward could not hide their deficiencies.

England’s line-out simply fell apart under the close scrutiny of the visitors, and their pack failed to find answers to Ireland superiority in the rucks, scrums and the mauls.

But it looked like business as usual for England after O’Gara missed a sitter in the opening minutes - yet the Munster fly-half did well to recover his composure to slot two trickier penalties soon afterwards.

Moments later, however, a rare creak in the Irish scrum saw Peter Stringer hassled off the ball, which went loose - Paul Grayson collected and fed to Matt Dawson who touched down under the posts for a converted try.

The Twickenham crowd duly erupted, but Ireland refused to bow to the ’inevitable’, even after a Grayson penalty, fighting back to claim a deserved half-time lead of 12-10 courtesy of two further O’Gara penalties.

The World Cup winners’ home-coming party was going badly, and England exploded out of the slips after the break, only to be denied a try after the video ref ruled - quite correctly - that Ben Cohen was guilty of a double movement in the act of scoring.

The let-off seemed to inspire Ireland and Gordon D’Arcy - unquestionably the find of the tournament thus far - left the England defence standing with a superb break.

After the ball was spread wide, Leinster fullback Dempsey came onto the end of the last past to cross over in the corner. O’Gara added a brilliant conversion to leave every Englishman in attendance visibly shocked.

The home side finally upped the tempo and substitute Mark Regan thought he had crossed the Irish line, but he was pushed into touch before he could ground the ball.

Grayson added a penalty to make the score 19-13 and - despite some late pressure - England continued to make basic errors in the face of their very stubborn guests.

Ireland managed to hang on, and found the energy to perform a jig of pure delight once referee Paul Honiss blew for full-time.