ANDY FARRELL HAS confirmed that Johnny Sexton’s injury is only a short-term issue, with the Ireland coach confident that his captain will be available for the concluding three games of this Six Nations campaign.
Sexton tweaked his hamstring in training yesterday and was replaced in the starting XV by Joey Carbery. Farrell, however, is not concerned the injury is serious.
“Oh no, it’s a small hamstring strain that is definitely going to keep him out for this weekend,” the Ireland coach said. “It might be a week to ten days but what we don’t want to do is risk anything and make that worse and take him out of the competition completely so we expect him to be back pretty soon.”
Unsurprisingly the news dominated today’s press briefing, Sexton having started 28 of Ireland’s last 31 games in this competition. The coach, however, stuck rigidly to his message. “We grow as a group,” was his mantra in response to five separate questions, three about other players stepping up to the task in Sexton’s absence, two about how they’ll cope without their captain.
“There’s always twists and turns, especially within a Six Nations,” said Farrell. “It’s a long old competition that runs over eight weeks so there will always be something that we have to deal with.
“Obviously Johnny is an important member of our group being skipper of the side. He is integral to how we push forward with many parts of our environment but at the same time this is about the group. Johnny will travel with us and be as leading (sic) as he possibly can be.
“It’s a great development for us as a team going forward as well and we still expect ourselves to be at our best in Paris on Saturday.”
They need to be. France may be sending Ireland a lot of love this week via their coaching and managerial staff – Shaun Edwards and Raphaël Ibañez talking Ireland up like salesmen desperate to pitch their product at a prospective buyer. Yet it is clear that Les Bleus’ are a formidable force once more.
“I’m expecting both sides to up it a notch or two and be at their best,” said Farrell. “Hopefully we can put in a performance that will give us a chance for what is a game that is being built up as a big game and rightly so. That’s exactly where we want to be. We want to be at our best so that’s what we’re concentrating on.”
He also has to concentrate on the fact France have loaded their bench with forwards – six to be precise – with just two replacement backs in there.
“We know the size of their pack and we know how good they are set-piece wise etc and we know how dynamic they are when they get into our 22 as well. It doesn’t really change for us as well. It’s no relevance to us whether it is a 6-2 split or whatever, there is always a bit of risk with these type of things. But there is also the relevance of them having a six day turnaround as well which might have been in their thoughts.”
Plenty of thoughts went through Farrell’s mind as he picked his team. Carbery or Jack Carty to replace Sexton? Bundee Aki or Robbie Henshaw? Tadhg Beirne or Iain Henderson?
In the end, Aki was in, Henshaw benched; Beirne selected, Henderson held back as a replacement. Farrell’s logic?
“The side played pretty well last week, there is a bit of cohesion there, Robbie and Hendy have obviously, they’ve not had as much training time as others have had. They’re fit and well and have had a great week, back in the thick of things, and ready to add off the bench.”