It was 2009 when Johnny Sexton first played against South Africa. In Croke Park that day, a curious, soupy fog settled into the ground. He remembers two things. Lining up a shot where he had trouble seeing the posts and the names on Springbok shirts walking on to the pitch, ones he had only ever seen before on television.
For that reminder of more than a decade ago, Sexton allows himself a grin. It was a similar fixture to next Saturday. South Africa were coming in as World Champions and had just come off a successful Lions Tour.
“It’s mad to think I’m still going,” he says 13 years later. “I remember obviously being very nervous. I remember looking at guys like Victor Matfield and going, ‘Do I belong on this pitch?’ I was very new to the stage. But I loved it and it gave me the drive to go on and play more games for Ireland.”
Consumed by the day-to-day, week-to-week preparations, it is not a prevailing thought in Sexton’s head that this will be his last World Cup journey. After three Six Nations titles, two Triple Crowns and a Grand Slam, he believes Ireland have a squad that can win in Paris 2023.
Over the years, he has also become the pragmatist, the realist and understands Ireland must now alter its personality. The version that beat New Zealand last summer, impressive as it was, cannot be the same as the version that will appear on the pitch in four days.
“You’ve got to keep evolving, you’ve got to keep getting better,” says Sexton. “If you stay the same, other teams will pass you out. We need to build a real competition for places, so no one can get comfortable. That is exactly what the coaches are doing.
“They’re challenging us in how we play the game, they’re challenging us by putting all these fixtures in, with the Emerging Ireland tour, the Maori games, now the New Zealand A game. All these guys are getting chances to put what the coaches want out on the pitch.
“That’s going to create... there were 50 players out at training today and I was thinking to myself that 20 of them are going to be left at home for the World Cup. And I couldn’t pick who is going to be left at home.”
The hard lessons stay with players. Sexton remembers how Ireland were also set up for a successful World Cup in 2015 with a competitive team and a helpful draw. Quids in. They won the pool, then lost seven players in the space of a week and were not equipped to survive the impact.
“We probably [have] 23 or 24 good players,” he says. “When you look at France they have 80 good players, 80 players that are ready to go to the World Cup.”
100th cap
Saturday’s outcome and the Springboks will be measured through that prism. Players like himself and scrumhalf Conor Murray, who could earn his 100th cap and join a special group of players, have matured together.
Murray will be 34 years old when Paris comes around, Sexton 38, and if they are there, it will be a testament to their rugby acumen. Neither player, who have faced batteries of questions about their age by facing them down with performances, are yet accepting the turning years as career oppressors.
“I haven’t thought too much about the bigger picture,” says Sexton. “It’s a driving factor. But it’s not something I think about this week for example. I’m focused on South Africa and making sure I get my stuff right during training, making sure to put the team in a good place and come Saturday try to put in the best performance I can out there.
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“Then it will be trying to repeat next week and trying to repeat the week after. We have spoken about the World Cup of course and have that as the goal. We are always building towards that. We don’t refer to it week on week. It is very much focused on South Africa this week.”
And that is how it goes. This week, the next week, the next month and see what has turned to dust and what has thrived.
“Every Test match you play, you want to win,” he says. “How you do it is the most important thing. If we want to do special things over the next 18 months, we’ve got to beat different teams playing different games and they [Springboks] are very different to New Zealand. They are almost unique. They are the nearest team to England maybe in terms of how they play.”
Special things; big and ballsy and just right.
