Sexton issues rallying call in quest to better the Blues’ best

ANOTHER week passes and Leinster are becoming more and more familiar to everyone who witnessed them conquer all before them last season.

More familiar to everyone, that is, except the double champions themselves. Because they are still on that endless search within for something more.

They will beat Dragons this evening – the return of another five Irish stars should, you suspect, propel them towards a five-point haul.

But more than being better than the opposition, their primary aim will be being better than themselves.

Their new captain, Johnny Sexton, will personify that desire, his admission of recent struggles in his own game demonstrating that, even after all he has won and done, the 33-year-old still demands much, much more from himself.

“I feel that I can get better from last season,” he tells us before joining seasonal debutants Rob Kearney, James Ryan, Garry Ringrose and, having recovered from his horror ACL against France in February, Josh van der Flier.

“Mentally better, better levels of performance through the season. That is what I will be striving for. Being physically good is a big thing,” Sexton continues.

“I find when I’m not carrying niggles, I can have a clear week in training, I can have a professional build up and do all the training I want.

“Then the performance will hopefully look after itself. But when I’m struggling with niggles, picking up strains and knocks, that’s where my performance level dips.

“So for me, in pre-season was about my body – I worked pretty hard with a couple of different people and hopefully we will see the benefits of it.

“You always learn a lot in the low points and a couple of years ago I just couldn’t perform as well as I wanted to and it really frustrated me.

“I found solutions to it, found people who could help me, and I learned a lot, so now I’m a better professional, got a better routine – that’s what I took out of that situation.”

Now as official leader of the group, he will seek the same self-drive from others, too, as Leinster build into their campaign, always aiming for perfection.

“There are ten-minute patches where you think, ‘Yeah, that is something special’. If you look back at Leinster over the years we have had some great halves but you never have the perfect game.

“But it’s important that you always strive for it, isn’t it? Always critical of yourself, and others, trying to get better.

“So we don’t really look at the season. When you start off the season you don’t feel like that.

“We watched a lot of highlights from last year with Leo (Cullen) and Stuart (Lancaster) and there are areas we need to get better at, that we can get better at. That is encouraging.

“But the other side of it is you know the other teams are going to get better, the big teams in Europe. You see already Saracens, Exeter, Clermont – they are dominating the game they are playing in.

“We are not there doing that yet so we just have to worry about ourselves now, get our levels of performance back to where they need to be and then we can start talking about what we are going to achieve.

“But at the moment we are little bit far off to be talking about improving on last year.”

Two months in but it seems like another special journey is only just beginning. Verdict: Leinster