Johnny Sexton says World Cup injury was biggest let down of career

As bulk suppliers toward Ireland's World Cup campaign, with 18 players having been part of that intense four-month programme of pre-season, warm-up games, the tournament itself and ultimately the quarter-final exit, Leinster would be more vulnerable to a hangover than most.

Opinions vary as to whether this contributed to their limp performance against Wasps at the RDS last Sunday, even within the camp itself. But Johnny Sexton, for one, yesterday candidly conceded it could have been a factor, not least for himself, after the nature of his premature exit in the first-half of the pool win against France.

"I don't know. It is tough to get over. For me, personally, it was probably the biggest disappointment of my career to come off the pitch in that France game.  Having felt I had worked so hard, I felt I was coming into a really good place physically and mentally. It was going to be a really good time for me and the team and then to miss the guts of that French game and then the Argentina game and watch it all just crumble, I suppose, definitely took a while to get over.

Excuses

“Then I had to rehab the groin and get over a bit of a chest infection so I am still working back to finding a bit of form and rhythm. Maybe there are a few guys there in that boat, but they are all excuses. What we produced on Saturday wasn’t good enough in every aspect.

“You can start in the set-piece, a lot of lineouts and scrums. Some decision-making, some handling errors, bad passing, a few kicks. You know what I mean? It just all adds up, snowballs, and it turned into a bit of a disastrous day, really.”

Lamenting how Leinster had chased the game and made too many errors, that they were a little disjointed post-World Cup was not a viable excuse either.

“We are trying to play a little bit differently to how we played with the Irish team and we are playing under different calling structures, but we are professionals and what we produced wasn’t good enough. We’re not getting away with that.

“I think it was disjointed and a bit all over the place at times and we’ve looked at that this morning to hopefully try to figure out ways of getting around that.

“Hopefully we can be a hell of a lot better this week because if we’re not, we’re not gonna be far from being out of the competition. Last year teams obviously qualified out of the pool winning four games and having lost their first two, but with the pool that we’re in we really need a result this week.”

As someone who lived in Paris for two years while playing with Racing Metro, Sexton’s affinity with the French capital city made the images from last weekend all the more upsetting.

“I only heard about it late on Friday, just before I went to bed, and I ended up staying up a few more hours watching Sky News. You are obviously pretty concerned for the people you know over there and for the people of Paris. It hits home a bit more when you have lived there for a few years.

“You have visited the places that were hit. Thankfully, all my friends over there were okay.”

Sexton knows the 10th and 11th arrondissements and the Place de la Republique, although he’d never attended a concert in the Bataclan theatre.

Worried

“A few of the boys have been to a concert there last year, but I haven’t been there myself. Look, it’s hard to talk about because it affects so many people and I’m not there anymore. The people I know in Paris are pretty shook-up and pretty worried. Obviously my thoughts are with them.”

He had attended events at the Stade de France. “I’ve been there a few times at concerts and games when I was living there, football or rugby games, and security is top-notch. At the time you think it’s a pain in the arse when they’re frisking you going in to watch a football game, but it obviously saved a hell of a lot of lives.”

While all the more appreciative for being back in Dublin, Sexton was quick to stress those troubling images were not in any way an excuse for his or Leinster’s poor performance.

“It wasn’t part of the reason why we played badly.”