Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Sexton is praised by Bestie
place - the standards he drives, the way he holds himself to the highest standards. He is just a competitor.
“When you get that and you get a few more people in the surroundings of the same ilk, it spreads through the squad.
“Then, you get young guys coming in and they see that’s the way you behave.
“All of a sudden, you get a trend within a squad.
“It can very easily go the other way. If you have people who cut corners and young players come in and see that, that’s what they do.
“We’re really lucky in that we have that core of players that really want to win and, under no circumstances, do they ever like to lose.
“And Johnny probably epitomises that for us.”
Asked what a second win on the board in this championship would mean to Schmidt’s side, Best replied: “It’s momentum. I think the Six Nations is all about creating momentum, gathering points.
“I think it’s pointless of us to throw in a cliche that you take it one game at a time. But if you don’t do it this week – it’s easy to say it going into the France game – but these are the games that you really show if it is one game at a time.
“For us, it’s to make sure that we take this game in isolation and we try to produce a bigger performance than we had last week and try to keep that momentum and keep the wins column ticking over. It’s about making sure that we perform to the levels that we expect.
“We don’t judge it on tries, we don’t judge it on the scoreboard. We judge it on how we go about doing all the little things that we know contribute to a massive team performance.”