Blues ready to leave out Sexton for Munster tie
The bigger picture takes precedence for Leinster encounter with Munster
STUART LANCASTER has admitted that Leinster may rest captain Johnny Sexton for Saturday’s Pro14 meeting with Munster at Lansdowne Road as the Blues keep one eye on their European Champions Cup opener with Wasps on Friday week (October 12). Having featured only five times in the Pro14 last season, Sexton has already started three games in the competition this term, and asked if the out-half may be due a break ahead of Wasps’ visit to the RDS just six days later, Lancaster admitted there was a temptation to rest the Ireland star. ‘Yeah, certainly the challenge that we have that others don’t is that we play Friday night, we kick off Europe with the Wasps game. That does have an effect,’ Lancaster said. ‘We play Saturday evening, Sunday we’ll be off but Monday, where we would traditionally be quite quiet, will have to be a reasonably full training day. Tuesday we’ll be off and then we’ll go Wednesday and Thursday is captain’s run, Friday is the game. We’ll certainly have to manage the squad but I don’t want anyone to think we’re not taking the game seriously because it’s entirely the opposite. ‘A pretty strong Leinster will be put out and I imagine a pretty strong Munster team but I’d imagine both teams will have an eye on how many games they play this time of year with Europe coming around the corner as well.’
THERE are many fascinating subplots, both collective and individual, to Saturday’s packed showdown between Leinster and Munster at Lansdowne Road.
Is the Van Graan plan kicking in to the point where Munster are finally in a position to knock Leinster off their perch as Ireland’s strongest team?
After a first month of mixed returns, can the southerners belatedly carry their ultra-impressive home form with them on their travels?
As the country’s premier backrows go head-to-head, is the inform Jack Conan ready to supplant CJ Stander as Ireland’ No 8? Can Munster second row Tadhg Beirne make a similar statement about his international credentials after his native province let the Kildare man go three seasons ago?
And then there is the face-off at No10, the biggest box office draw of all, featuring a master versus apprentice contest between Johnny Sexton and Joey Carbery.
After all the angst and debate over Leinster losing a player they had nurtured carefully to their greatest rivals, the out-half contest would be the most compelling of all — with implications stretching beyond provincial boundaries to the World Cup in Japan next year.
Except now it looks unlikely to happen.
Yesterday, Leinster senior coach Stuart Lancaster dropped a strong hint that Sexton was going to sit this one out.
And, while that decision is certain to inflame the more sensitive of the Munster fraternity and reignite the debate over the Pro14 featuring too many matches where teams are not fully locked and loaded, when you assess the bigger pictures for Sexton, Leinster and Ireland, it’s the smart move.
The cold reality is that, while allowing for all the significance that goes with Irish rugby’s most celebrated rivalry, this is not a must-win game for Leinster.
The Pro14 champions are cruising along at the top of Conference B and have to keep an eye on their Champions Cup prerogatives, their bid to retain their European crown getting underway with a tricky home assignment against Wasps the following weekend.
Sexton has started their last three matches, clocking up a healthy 206 minutes this season so far, and Leinster’s priority is ensuring he is fully fresh and functional for the visit of Wasps on Friday week.
There is an Ireland aspect to this decision also, with Sexton’s exposure operating within the controls of the IRFU’s player management system but it is important to emphasise that this is Leinster’s call — if they want to start Sexton against Munster this Saturday, they can do so. To clarify, the player management scheme works on the basis of the season being broken down into three segments — the start of the season to November, from November to the Six Nations and from the Six Nations to the end of the season. Within that framework, players are minutely assessed under various strength and conditioning criteria and then allotted minutes of exposure through those periods.
The English Premiership clubs might recoil at this level of control but it is far more autonomous than the situation that existed in the not too distant past when provinces would be told, ‘You can play X for 40 minutes this weekend, Y for 20…’ and so on.
The allotted minutes for Sexton are not known but it is pretty certain Leinster will want to use the time available for their games at home to Wasps and away to Toulouse this month as they seek to get their campaign off to a positive start. Thus, it makes complete sense to leave Sexton out of their starting plans this weekend.
Critics will look at the extra minutes racked up by other Ireland out-half contenders Jack Carty (378), Billy Burns (374) and Carbery (267), who may all start again this weekend, and question Sexton’s resting but that is to ignore the individual requirements at play.
It is in Munster and Ireland’s interest for Carbery to gain as much game time as possible at 10 as he seeks to properly reacquaint himself with the position, while Carty and Burns are scrapping for extended Ireland squad places, at best.
There is also the age factor. Sexton, although he looks as physically fit as at any stage in his career, is significantly older at 33 than Carbery (22), Carty (26) or Burns (24), whose allotted minutes are, consequently, likely
to be greater.
There is also the need for Ross Byrne to get his eye in. This is important for Leinster — to prepare for when Sexton is away on international duty — and Ireland, where Byrne could come into the equation for the November games against Italy and the USA.
Resting Sexton may lead to knee-jerk, myopic disapproval from certain quarters but, in a season where Ireland’s World Cup ambitions supercede all other considerations, the wide-angled perspective takes precedence.
Ultimately, while Saturday’s showdown will provide invaluable information for both provinces and Ireland coach Joe Schmidt, the result does not count for a great deal in the grander scheme of things.
Neither province will be knocked out of Pro14 contention if they lose, nor will defeat mean they are incapable of getting back to winning ways when kicking off their European campaigns the following week.
And, most pertinently of all, if Ireland fail, yet again, to reach the last four of the World Cup at the ninth time of asking, nobody is going to remember or care about who won this Pro14 interprovincial contest a year previously.
And that is the way everyone with a vested interest in the progress of Irish rugby needs to be thinking between now and September 22 next year when Ireland open their Japan 2019 bid against Scotland.
Resting Sexton is the right call.