Steady as she goes for Sexton
THIS was awkward. Normally, a rare appearance by Johnny Sexton at a Thursday press conference is usually a golden opportunity to grab decent pre-match quotes.
However, such is the difficulty engineered by the 11-hour time difference between New Zealand and home that anything the Ireland out-half had to say about the Lions’ early-morning tour opener at Whangarei was irrelevant given the match would be over before some readers pick up their Saturday papers.
The other difficulty is you can never know these days what might happen with Sexton. There was really no point reporting how he felt ready to shine for fear his sentiment could already be rendered redundant by first-day events.
Sexton was adamant he is in position to strike and become the Lions’ No10 when the Test series comes around on June 24 in Auckland, but it would be premature to buy into the player’s insistence that he suddenly has the robustness to produce a smiling finish to a season of frown where frustrations are never far from the surface.
The Irish winter was horrible, soft tissue injuries the bane of his life, and while they were reportedly resolved since, it was telling that Sexton only played two matches in the nine weeks since an April 1 European run at the Aviva before this morning’s Lions appearance.
That was evidence of a player minding his body, not someone capable of putting it on the line week after week without fear. But he stressed this lack of activity was more to do with managerial decisions at Leinster rather than any personal complaints about his body.
‘That was coaches’ decisions. It was at the start of the season I struggled to get on the pitch,’ he explained. ‘In terms of game time the whole season, when I was on the pitch I was happy with how I played, but at the end of the season I was fit and ready to go.
‘Obviously, it wasn’t ideal. We had a (European) quarter-final straight after the Six Nations, so the guys didn’t want me to play before that and then didn’t want me to play before the semi-final. But I was training on the pitch the whole time. Apart from a few bumps and bruises that you always carry, I’ve been fairly injury-free as such and ready to go now.’
His protestations don’t conthe vince. If Sexton was so fit and able, then why was he not more exposed instead of being left undercooked and producing one of the worst displays of his career when Leinster were ejected from the Pro12 semi-finals?
Never had an RDS crowd winced and groaned so much watching their star fail to glisten. But enough of the domestic, the silver lining of Leinster’s painful defeat being that Sexton, with no league final to concentrate on, linked up with the Lions for their Carton House prep week and got stuck into the three-way battle for the number No10 shirt with Owen Farrell and Dan Biggar.
Its value was netting him the shirt for the tour opener and his ambition is that it can be the start of something special like 2013, not a painful chapter to rue, greasy conditions of the New Zealand winter a worry for a player prone to too many niggly aches and pains in his upper legs.
‘Preparation won’t be ideal but you have got to leave all the excuses at the door when you play for the Lions. It doesn’t come around very often so you have got to appreciate every moment you get in the jersey.
‘I still had the jitters coming in the first day, it’s like the first day in school but less so than last time. It’s still a very special place to come into and you really have to lift your game in training. It’s a great challenge.
‘It’s a clean slate. I don’t think they’re going to say, “Oh, he did well four years ago, so we’re going to put him in”. It will depend on form from here to the first Test and how well you do.
‘The goal is to make as good an impression as I can, play to my potential and see where that gets me. If that gets me into the team or the squad, or not in the 23, if I did my best I can live with that.’
Last time Sexton played a Test in New Zealand, he was on the receiving end of a 0-60 hiding with Ireland. That was a threeweek trip full of regret. Five years on, he now hopes a stay twice as long will have a happier outcome.
‘It’s a unique place to tour. Everywhere you go you get the Maori welcomes and all that, so that’s different straight away. It’s the hardest place to tour because of how attritional the games will be,’ he said, adding that he isn’t reading too much into Ireland’s Chicago win over the All Blacks last November. The dynamics are different.
‘It’s the middle of their season rather than the end. Often you don’t get the best All Blacks in November when they are tired. It’s really around the summer tour where we have struggled in the past and come up short, so we are going to have to find another gear to get past them this time.’