Jonathan Sexton reached a milestone in Champions Cup rugby in the 55th minute of last Friday night's 57-3 victory over Montpellier at the RDS when converting Jack Conan's second try of the match.
The conversion, his third of the game, took Sexton to 501 points for European rugby’s elite tournament moving him to eighth in the all-time rankings, a points scoring list headed by former Munster, Ireland and Lions outhalf and current Racing 92 assistant coach Ronan O’Gara (110 matches) who finished his career on 1,385 points, a mark that may never be eclipsed.
The match and points tally includes the two seasons that Sexton played for Racing Metro 92 before changing to Racing 92. He has played 44 matches for Leinster and seven for the Parisian club.
Sexton is just one point behind the current Wales and Lions kicking coach, Neil Jenkins (502), while from an Irish landmark perspective, he is chasing former Ulster and Ireland outhalf and current director of rugby at Gloucester, David Humphreys who scored 564 points in 57 European ties.
There are only two current players in the top 10 of the all-time standings, the other, interestingly is Saracens and England outhalf cum centre, Owen Farrell. He has amassed 544 points from just 49 matches and as things stand appears Sexton's main rival for the number 10 Test jersey with the Lions in New Zealand this summer, just as they were four years ago in Australia.
Sexton’s European Leinster debut dates back to December 15th, 2007, when he came on as an 80th minute replacement for Brian O’Driscoll in a 29-10 defeat to Edinburgh at Murrayfield. He went on to play one other match in the tournament against the Leicester Tigers at Welford Road.
Understudying
The 31-year-old Dubliner didn't score a point in four of his first eight matches in the tournament but in each of those games he came on as a replacement; at the time he was understudying Felipe Contepomi, Leinster's first choice outhalf.
Indeed in those 51 European ties, Sexton has failed to score in nine matches, but on six occasions he was among the replacements rather than starting and twice Isa Nacewa was the chosen placekicker on the day. The other time was a pool match against Wasps at the Ricoh Arena last year, when he captained Leinster, but suffered a concussion after 10 minutes and was withdrawn.
He averages 9.82 points per game in all the matches but measuring his strike-rate in the games in which he has scored that shifts to a figure of 11.92. There is a perception abroad that Sexton has missed a fair few games through injury/illness/concussion but during the 10 seasons playing for Leinster and Racing 92, he could have played in a maximum of 68 European matches (this does not include Challenge Cup ties) based on how the respective teams fared in those particular years.
Given that he lined out in 51 of 68, it means he played 75 per cent of the matches while it is also germane to point out that he didn't establish himself as first choice with Leinster until after Contepomi's unfortunate injury in the 2009 Heineken Cup semi-final victory over Munster. He was also hors de combat as the French might say for most of his second season at Racing.
Leaving aside this season in which Sexton has missed three pool matches through injury, he was absent for just one European pool match in each of his three previous seasons with the club and played in all nine matches in which Leinster won the Heineken Cup in the 2011-2012 season. His half-time team talk inspired Leinster to victory over the Northampton Saints, the outhalf chipping in handsomely with 28 points.
Player and province will be hoping he stays injury free for the remainder of the current campaign starting with Friday’s final pool match against Castres.
