Boks’ victory provides hope, unity to nation
>> DUBLIN: Johnny Sexton said the disappointment of Ireland exiting the World Cup at the quarterfinal stage will remain with him and his teammates for the rest of their lives.
The 34-year-old — whose underwhelming performance in the 46-14 thrashing by New Zealand summed up Ireland’s poor showing — denied the Irish had cracked under the pressure.
Ireland had looked certainties last year to reach at least the semifinals for the first time after achieving the Six Nations Grand Slam for only the third time in their history and going on to beat the All Blacks for the first time at home.
However, their performances in Japan — losing to the hosts in the pool stage and then the humbling at the hands of the All Blacks — reflected a notable decline in their form through the year.
Sexton was emblematic of the loss of form rarely reaching the heights that had seen him scoop the World Player of the Year award for 2018 when Ireland handler Joe Schmidt won coach of the year.
“Yeah, it’ll be raw for four years,” said Sexton at the launch of this season’s European Champions Cup in Cardiff.
“It’ll be raw for lads that go to the next World Cup, for the lads that don’t, for the rest of their careers, for the rest of their lives really.”
Sexton, who was at the launch representing Leinster with whom he has won the trophy four times, said there was no escaping how to describe their campaign.
“You can have opinions on why but it is a failure,” he said.
Sexton confirmed the Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU) were going to ask an outside company to review the campaign and ask all involved their opinion.
“What won’t happen is no one will be thrown under the bus,” he said.
“There’s no one person at fault for this, there was no one person you can point the finger at.”
However, Sexton said he had not thought about retirement and wanted to carry on as long as he remained fit and his coaches at Leinster and Ireland deemed him up to the task.