Johnny Sexton: ’It is not over but we have to hold up our end of the bargain’

Like everyone else bar France, Ireland cannot win a Grand Slam and hence have had to readjust their sights for the 2022 Guinness Six Nations. And like England, Wales and Scotland also they are still very much in the title mix.

While Ireland have only ever won three Grand Slams, outright titles haven’t been too commonplace either, with 14 in total and another eight shared. There have only been 11 Triple Crowns in total as well, and just nine since the start of the 20th century.

Johnny Sexton was a key figure in the 2014 and 2015 titles as well as the 2018 Grand Slam, and maintains there is still “a massive amount” on the line for this Irish team.

“We spoke about it, that if we won our last three games we are guaranteed the Triple Crown. I came up in an era when they were winning Triple Crowns for fun,” he said in reference to the four Triple Crowns in a six-year period between 2004 and 2009. “But then you look into history and we have won, I think, it is nine Triple Crowns, which is very few when you think about it over the last 100 years.

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“It would be a great thing and it is guaranteed if we win the last three. Of course we give ourselves a great shot at the title if we win the last three because France have to go to Scotland this week and Wales and then play a good England team in France as well. So it is not over but we have to hold up our end of the bargain.”

If this Irish team is to emulate the champions of 2014 and 2015 then, as was the case in those years, it could well come down to points difference, even if that would be a distracting mindset for the players before Sunday’s game against Italy at the Aviva Stadium (kick-off 3pm).

“In this competition it is something that we are mindful of from the get-go, from the first game,” said Sexton. “It is no different now. We know that every point will count but you can’t get too drawn into that.

“That has to be part of our mentality, that we try and win as many moments as we can, but how we do it is getting our performance right, getting our processes right and then going out and executing. And if we can do that, then the rest looks after itself.”

Sexton has been back in full training for the past week after missing the Paris game with a hamstring strain and declared himself “good to go” this week.

While he knows he may have missed out on his last Six Nations game in Paris, Sexton consoles himself with the thought that Ireland have two World Cup pool games there next year, and potentially more in the knock-out stages.

Hence, while missing out on what he described as Ireland’s biggest game in quite a while made for a difficult watch from the stands, he tried to make the most of it.

“Yeah, you learn as much watching. You don’t want to watch and learn but you do. Being in the dressingroom and listening to what people say. You go: ‘If I was there, maybe I’d say this’ and wonder whether that would have been the right thing. You’re always thinking and always trying to improve, even when you’re not playing.

“We’ve got Italy this week at home which is a very different game but then you fast forward to a week later against England and you are back in that cauldron again – away game, full crowd. So there’s lots of learnings to take into this team’s journey that we need to learn from.

“It was a lot of guys’ first time going to an away venue with a full crowd. The guys who had been new to the Test arena over the last couple of years, and even the guys that had been used to it, it took them maybe a little bit by surprise. The atmosphere, the enormity of it for the French team, maybe that took a few by surprise and led to a slow start and the start shocked us.”

Sexton totally concurred with Andy Farrell that Ireland could fall into “the trap” of believing they were simply outmuscled by France, and cited Leinster’s Euro semi-final defeat by La Rochelle last season as a further example.

“Everyone said ‘Ah, they just got beaten up’ but if you want to learn properly, you go: ‘Where in the game could we have avoided some of the collisions?’ Because they have bigger men, we have to get over that.

“They’re not way bigger, we’ve got some big men too, but some of the detail in our play wasn’t where it should have been, which allowed them to dominate some collisions. Against other teams that are also very physical, like New Zealand, we were able to move the ball to certain areas of the pitch or get soft shoulders and win the rucks easier, get quick ball, and play our game.

“We just weren’t quite on point at that and yeah, it’s very easy to go ‘we lost the physical battle’. But there were lots of instances where we won the physical battle but we just weren’t accurate enough through the full game and it’s something we need to learn from because it’s not the first time it’s happened to us. But it’s the first time in a while and hopefully it will reset us and we’ll go again.”