Johnny Sexton urges Ireland to avoid mistakes of the past
Captain Johnny Sexton says Ireland must keep evolving in order to avoid repeating the mistake of peaking too soon for a World Cup.
The Irish travelled to the 2019 tournament in Japan with high expectations following a Six Nations Grand Slam and a statement victory over New Zealand the previous year but suffered a familiar quarter-final exit.
With the 2023 World Cup on the horizon, Andy Farrell’s in-form side are poised to test their current credentials during a three-match series against the All Blacks.
Fly-half Sexton, who will retire after next year’s competition in France, is striving to maintain the upward trajectory having helped silence the doubters during an unconvincing start to Farrell’s reign as head coach.
“We were written off left, right and centre and we’ve come back and we’ve showed some great stuff,” he told Sky Sports ahead of Saturday’s first Test in Auckland.
“We’ve had some great results to go with it because we were always saying, ‘it’s coming, it’s coming’ and I think people were looking at us going, ‘is it really?’.
“And now we’ve got to keep it going.
“We’ve got to keep improving because that’s the mistake we made in the last cycle for the World Cup; we probably peaked in 2018 and we didn’t continue to evolve and that’s what we’re keen to not let happen.”
Ireland have won 12 of their last 13 Tests, including defeating New Zealand 29-20 in Dublin last autumn to partially avenge World Cup elimination at their hands in Tokyo.
Sexton, who turns 37 in less than a fortnight, will lead his country at Eden Park this weekend, with further meetings with Ian Foster’s All Blacks to come in Dunedin and Wellington.
He believes the tour is the ideal opportunity to increase squad depth, with five uncapped players among the initial 40-man travelling party.
“We’ve put some fresh faces on this tour that we need to get up to speed, that we need to create that really competitive environment for that next World Cup,” he said.
“We need a lot of guys to be ready and that’s what the point of this tour is, to test us and to see how deep we can go in our squad.”
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Spot on Ben. Dead right. Havili looked great at 10. Easily the highest rugby IQ of any NZ player these days. Getting a kick charged down is a result of getting used to adjusting your depth to the line at 10, which he will sort out with time. But other than that it was an outstanding first effort in that position this year. I think the NZ media has misunderstood this directive from Razor. Havili might rank behind B Barrett this year, but Beuden is 33 this month and won't last much longer. DMaC is great but flaky and not really a test match animal (his efforts in Dunedin versus Aus last year for example). If Razor can't have Mounga, DMaC is too unstructured for Razor (and is just too small for test rugby). Havili will end up our first choice first five, and in partnership with Jodie will be excellent. Two triple threat operators in tandem, and big bodies and tough tacklers to boot. Jordoe will be the ABs goal kicker. I am an Aucklander and Blues (and Warriors) fan, but Havili at 10 is going to be sensational in time… he can be the best first five in the world by the end of this year. No question.
Go to commentsSharks deserved to be far further back by the last quarter. Their tackling was awful, their set pieces were disappointing, their defensive organization was poor (especially on the Kok side of the D line), they kept making unnecessary errors, and they never looked like cracking the Clermont defense during those first 60m. Masuku kept them in touch, with some help from the Clermont generosity on penalty opportunities. Agree with the writer of this article. It was belligerence, and ability to raise their pressure game just enough, that turned the last quarter into a Bok-style shutout. Clermont have a reputation of not playing the full 80m, and there was a bit of that for sure. But, quite often when the intensity of a team drops off in the last quarter credit is due to the opponent for tiring them out. At 60m, with the Kok try, you thought that just maybe the game was on. At 70m, with the Mapimpi contribution, one felt that Clermont were fading, while facing a team that would maintain the pressure game through the final whistle. Good win in the end, but the Sharks are still playing way below their potential. And with their resources, and a coach that has had enough time to figure things out, they are running out of excuses.
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