‘Have we hit our best? I don’t think we have’ – Ireland’s Sexton looks for more
THE RUGBY CHAMPIONSHIP made for interesting viewing this summer in the Sexton household, now back in Dublin rather than the suburbs of Paris.
Ireland are ranked as the second best international team by World Rugby now, but the Southern Hemisphere sides demonstrated that anyone from up north hoping to claim a World Cup in October will have to be very, very good.
Johnny Sexton is an Aer Lingus ambassador. Source: Billy Stickland/INPHO
The sheer speed of the clashes between Australia, South Africa and New Zealand was breathtaking at times, and though Sexton always wants to play against the best in the world he jokes that he might not be quite ready for that style of game just yet.
“Maybe when I’m up to the speed of things! Yeah, it’s been a frantic pace,” said Sexton at Dublin Airport yesterday.
“That’s a speed we’re going to have to live with come the World Cup and that’s what we’re trying to prepare for in training and these warm-up games. It’s hard to replicate, because we’re all playing our first games and trying to find a way to do it.”
One senses that Northern Hemisphere weather and tactics might slow the pace of World Cup games, but beating at least one of that trio looks like being a necessity if Joe Schmidt’s team are to create history.
Sexton refuses to even contemplate a meeting with those teams in the semi-final or final, however, instead pointing out that a France squad with three months of collective training behind them – rather than two sessions before the Six Nations – will pose a massive danger in Pool D.
As ever, the focus of Sexton and Schmidt and Ireland is on improving themselves. The score will take care of itself.
“We’ve got to two in the world, but have we hit our best? I don’t think we have, I think there’s a lot of improvement in certain areas that we can do,” said Sexton. “I think if we can make those improvements, we’d be confident in our ability.
“Where that gets us I don’t know. We’ve got to play France and they’re going to be at their best come World Cup time, they always are.
Schmidt and Sexton both see room for improvement in Ireland. Source: Billy Stickland/INPHO
“We’ve got our work cut out to win our pool and if we can do that – it’s a big ‘if’ – we can start talking about quarter-finals and beyond.”
With back-to-back Six Nations titles and a clean sweep of the November Tests in 2014 behind them, Schmidt’s side are certainly a high performance one.
The only mutterings around their displays have been in the area of attack, though the four-try 40-10 win over Scotland on a thrilling final day of this year’s Six Nations showed that Ireland can cut loose.
Sexton sees something in that particular performance that he hopes Schmidt’s side can take forward as a strength.
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