Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
MASTER OF PARIS
Skipper Sexton back to old stomping ground with view to winning silverware
JOHNNY SEXTON admits it would be the pinnacle of his career to lift the Six Nations as Ireland skipper.
Sexton, 35, has won the Grand Slam with his country as well as four Champions Cups with Leinster.
But to go to Paris and claim a bonus point win with top everything the Dubliner has achieved so far.
“It’s amazing when you’re in this environment, we don’t talk about the championship as much,” said Sexton.
“We’re al l ver y process focused and driven at the moment, it’s all about that.
“But now that you say it, it would be the pinnacle of my career to be captain of a team to win a trophy – especially for Ireland – and I’m very proud to do it. To win something would be the pinnacle, really.”
Sexton is returning to the Stade de France with Ireland for the first time since his famous ‘ Le Drop’ moment, when his magnificent drop goal broke French hearts and was the first step on the journey to the 2018 Grand Slam.
For the skipper, time has moved on and he just has to look around the current squad under Andy Farrell – who was an assistant coach to Joe Schmidt that last time – to know that dwelling on what happened the l ast time is meaningless.
When Farrell (inset) names his team for the game this morning ahead of training, half the team could be different to the one that started on that early February afternoon.
“We haven’t talked about two years ago anyway,” said Sexton. “We’ve got new coaches, a lot of new faces.
“If you look at the team from that day compared to the team that might go out at the weekend, there are some similarities, but there are a lot of new faces.
“A lot of those guys were spectators two years ago. It will bring back some fond memories for a split second when you walk into the stadium, but then it’ll be like every other game.
“It’s just a massive challenge, really. We have to take the lessons from six, seven months ago against England and play a lot better away from home because it’s different. I t ’s h a r d e r a n d obviously some of t the reasons are the c crowd, but there are o other reasons. ““France are obviously a top class team and we need to be at our very best this weekend.”
Sexton is rightly wary of the threat the French will pose, and points i n particular to the aggressive linespeed in defence that has been added by former Welsh coach Shaun Edwards. Howe ver t h e out-half is encouraged by what he saw in training yesterday, a much better cohesiveness compared to this time last week ahead of the Italy game. It’s not as new because we had a couple of months doing it in February and March,” he said. “You’ve got to remember you’re in Leinster mode, you’re in Leinster calls in your head.
“Even at times last week in training there’s a couple of Leinster calls that are slipping into the mind and you’re calling them out and lads are looking at you.
“It’s very hard to get them out of your head.
“I think this week is obviously more comfortable. We’re properly in Ireland mode and I think we trained much better and had a much better start to the week.
“Hopefully we can continue that and just build as the week goes on.”