Sexton vulnerable as overhaul looms
IT’S a year since Johnny Sexton looked an old man. He was in good company at the conclusion of Ireland’s awful World Cup effort in Japan, but Sexton’s circumstances were made glummer again by the fact that he was 34 years of age.
That is a veteran’s number in modern rugby, a sport that has broken new ground in science, precision and brutality in the quarter-century since professionalism.
Yet still he soldiers on, still the inspiration team-mates seek.
Sexton’s career is the study of a man made for big days. There was no one in the French ranks with anything close to his experience of gut-tightening days.
And with a quarter of this game gone, it was one of those days. Ireland were improbably close to the championship.
That was a fanciful prospect on the bleak February day England battered them in Twickenham.
Andy Farrell has started to introduce new faces, a process accelerated by injuries since the championship resumed, but he has not cast aside the greybeards.
That reluctance to look past long-established names looked ill-advised after the defeat to the English, with more dynamism from half-back, in particular, a matter that looked in need of urgent attention. Conor Murray looked a revived force against Italy, but the haplessness of the opposition heavily qualified the evidence from that display.
Sexton was proficient in that game, but he returned to Paris, the scene of two miserable years in his club career, with Ireland needing his game-craft rather than a buccaneering spirit.
For all of France’s vast promise, and the obsessive determination of the French union to have their team contending for the 2023 home World Cup, there is a fecklessness to this side that borders on cliché.
They conceded 16 penalties to Wales in a warm-up last weekend, and they burped up plenty here.
There was also the importance of Sexton’s relationship with referee Wayne Barnes, the two communicating amiably and the match official’s willingness to engage tempering Sexton’s tendency to badger.
Test rugby requires more than diplomacy and detachment, though. It is a hostile, exposed environment and the out half was left marooned in the move that concluded with Antoine Dupont’s try after seven minutes.
Sexton shot out of the defensive line but was easily bypassed by France’s full-back, Anthony Bouthier, who exploited the space to send Gael Fickou tearing up Ireland’s right wing.
Four minutes later, his kick through for Hugo Keenan that saw Bouthier sent to the sin bin was brilliant, and he helped build Irish pressure thereafter, with France doing their bit and conceding penalty after penalty.
From the last one of the first half, though, Ireland, four points behind, would have been well advised taking three and going in with France feeling the pressure.
Instead, Sexton went for the corner again, France won a turnover and they bounded in to the dressing room. The visitor trudged in having let a straightforward opportunity slip by.
It wasn’t just the older heads that were finding the night difficult to pin down.
With Jordan Larmour injured, Andy Farrell has settled on Jacob Stockdale as his full-back for this autumn and winter. Doubts about his reliability took an alarming turn with two errors in the first half, one a poor failure to ensure France couldn’t keep a ball in play that eventually brought Dupont’s try.
The other was the calamitous inability to claim a bouncing ball that brought France’s penalty try. At their best under Joe Schmidt, Ireland were stoics, a team who were able to endure much and proven to be imperturbable in times of stress.
Those methods eventually calcified, though, and the team were easily worked out by the time of the World Cup. But at their peak, Ireland under Schmidt made very few mistakes. First do no harm was their oath.
Whatever version of a new Ireland Farrell envisages is yet to emerge, but the second-half collapse in Paris last night had the feel of 2019 about it.
This was a tired team thoroughly worked out by more aggressive and more imaginative opponents.
Those championship hopes really were as faint as they felt in London in February. By the end, it was France chasing the cricket score they required to try and deny England.
Ireland, by then, were gone from their thoughts. Scoring difference was their only meaningful opponent.
Sexton was as helpless as any Irishman as France cut through them whenever they pleased.
The simple fact that he is 35 means his days in the jersey are drawing to a close.
Farrell may well be reluctant to discard such an enormously influential figure, but planning Ireland’s future must start with a viable alternative at No10.
Ross Byrne is currently the most convincing candidate – but that should only be the start of the changes.
‘COLLAPSE IN THE SECOND HALF HAD FEEL OF 2019 ABOUT IT’