Despite the pre-tournament optimism, Ireland's hunt for a first ever Rugby World Cup semi-final goes on for another four years after Joe Schmidt's side were blown away by Argentina yesterday.

But why did things go so drastically wrong for Ireland? Ex-Leinster and Toulouse back-row Aidan McCullen joined Oisin Langan on the Monday Rewind and he picked out two key factors.

"We were totally out-played at the breakdown, defensively and offensively. Two things: It was a banana skin, probably took the eye off the ball a little bit and if you think about that - same as Australia and Scotland - we concentrated on the French game. Imagine you were in the Argentinian dressing room and you saw this all the time, the cheers, 'thank God we didn't get New Zealand', how insulting that feels. Talk about the motivation that gives you then as well to go we're going to go out and absolutely destroy these guys and get in their face'. Every single impact was won by the Argentinians," he said.

"The second part was Ireland had a spine that was so essential and that was taken away. O'Brien, O'Connell and Sexton. Those guys missing meant that Ireland had to recover. And the game was built around the spine so if those guys are gone, you have to react in a reactive way and you have to play differently and Ireland had trained to play a certain way."   

Listen to the full interview via the Monday Rewind podcast:

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