Sexton’s time is up it’s time to move on

EVERYONE is entitled to an off day. We don’t buy into the notion that you’re only as good as your last game. When judging a player you have to judge them in the round, on their body of work if they’re at one end of the scale and on their potential if they’re at the other. Jonny Sexton’s performance against England in Twickenham last weekend wasn’t good, nobody would argue otherwise. To admit that doesn’t invalidate him as a player. It doesn’t mean he’s terrible all of a sudden. Nor does it mean that he’s got nothing more to offer necessarily.

He remains, at the moment, Ireland’s best option at ten for this year’s championship. The question really becomes one of whether or not he’s got much more to give beyond that. The Leinster man turns thirty five in the summer. Sexton will be thirty eight by the time the next World Cup in France rolls around and unless something has gone terribly wrong with the development path for Irish talent, Sexton won’t be on the plane for the festival in the Gallic idyll. Instead he’ll be rocking up to Montrose or Ballymount to offer his insights.

That being the case it always seemed a strange one for us that Andy Farrell would make him captain after the World Cup in Japan. His appointment only really makes sense as a shortterm one and maybe that is in fact the case. Let him have it for a year before passing it on to James Ryan for next year’s championship.

Watching last weekend’s action we couldn’t help but contrast Ireland’s approach with their elder statesman with that of France and their young tyro at out-half: Romain Ntamack. Ntamack, still just twenty years of age, ran the show against the Welsh in Cardiff. With Ntamack, France make a break with the past and build for the future. With Sexton Ireland are in a holding pattern at best. It’s time for Ireland to let go of the past – as illustrious as it has been – and start the process of renewal. Sexton’s time is up.