YOU ARE JOHNNY Sexton. You have done it all, grand slam, four Heineken Cups, two Lions tours, another couple of Six Nations championships, world player of the year.
But that was 2018. This is 2020 and this is different. In a sportsman’s life, autumn turns to winter in the blink of an eye. You think of Joe Frazier and how he described his role in the Thrilla in Manila, ‘going there as a champ, coming home as an old man’.
That’s sport. One moment all you hear is the adulation and the cheers and all you see are the smiles and the respect. Then it goes. The wrap-around pass doesn’t happen anymore. The legs no longer move as fast as they used to. The ball doesn’t bloody well stick to your hand when you need it to.
You have doubts and fears like everyone else. But you have conquered them before. Twenty-three-years old, fired into the fray, heard of but not really known. Eyes only for the ball, you ignore everything else. Heineken Cup semi-final day, 2009, Munster versus Leinster. You look at the posts, gently swaying at the Hill 16 end of Croke Park.
The angle is tricky but if you put this over, you’re a made man. In time, that kick becomes the moment a torch gets passed from Munster to Leinster, their era ending; yours beginning.
Now they say it is you who is approaching the end. You were in Twickenham last Sunday, scene of great days, your third Heineken Cup in 2012; your grand slam six years later. But this time you were awful. You shanked a couple of kicks, your attempt to catch the ball in the in-goal area ends in comic disaster.
Sunday is bad but Monday is worse. You reflect on everything that went wrong. Then some light emerges. You are part of a team review. Everyone’s hand goes up. It’s a communal confession. The penance is to watch the game all over again.
By Tuesday, you think it’s getting better. Italy is coming up. Then you hear the game has been postponed. So instead of prepping for it, you’re sitting here, Friday lunchtime, behind a table in an upstairs room of a rugby club, surrounded by 23 journalists, five camera crews and a dozen or so Dictaphones.
You are told what has been said about you on social media, the low player ratings from the people speaking to you now. You hear that Ronan O’Gara, an old rival and your former coach at Racing 92, thinks you’ve too much on your plate, now that the captaincy has been added to your kicking and play-making duties.
You listen to all this, hear the coach next to you make a little joke but you stare your inquisitor in the eye and calmly repeat the advice an old sage gave you recently.
When you’re leading in an orchestra, you’ve got to turn your back on the audience,” you say. “That’s something you’ve got to live by. Sometimes when things are going well you fall into bad habits and you have a little peak to see what’s going on in the audience”
You could leave it at that but you don’t. You remember the depth of your rivalry with O’Gara, standing over him at Croke Park in that 2009 Heineken Cup semi-final, glaring into his face. You’re told what he had to say about you on Virgin Media last weekend. You bite back.
I thought ROG was coaching at La Rochelle,” you say, smiling. “I don’t know why he’s talking about us.”
Well, when you’re Johnny Sexton, everyone talks about you – because of who you are and what you’ve done.
Like when Ireland’s season is on the line in 2018, you are the one who saves it. Ball inside your 22, you have to measure your drop-out to precision otherwise Iain Henderson won’t be in a position to leap and gather it.
You look at the stadium clock. There’s minutes left. The phases build. You look again. There are only seconds remaining now. Still more phases. This is like trench warfare. So you decide to do something different. You go to the skies. Again, precision is required.
Again, you’re on the money, Keith Earls the hero who makes the catch. Yards are made. Yet you’re cramping up.
You can’t get to a doctor. Not now. The stadium clock at the east end of the Stade de France has frozen on 80 minutes. Time’s up. You’re 13-12 down. You missed a penalty a quarter of an hour earlier and know you’ll hate yourself if you don’t make these moments count. So you self-medicate. The cramp goes.
But the team is going nowhere. So you say this has to be the moment, the one that’ll save the day and define your career. You drop into the pocket, scream for the ball and then nail the perfect drop-goal, 45 yards out, 41 phases in. You wheel away and run to the far end of the field and the entire team chases after you like the extras at the end of The Benny Hill Show – because you’re the man, best player in the world.
Now you’re not. Now, you’re 34. You’re not even close to being the best on your team.
I made glaring errors last Sunday,” you say. “That’s what happens when you’re an out-half because everyone can see them.”
Right now people see your age and the burden of captaincy and say it is too much.
“It’s not,” you say in response. “Look, it is a massive privilege to do the job. It wasn’t too much the first three times I did it. I just made mistakes last Sunday. It happens and I’ll just try and bounce back.
When you have a long career, you have lots of performances like that. Touch wood, I have a bit longer to go.”
But have you? Two weeks from now, you go back to the Stade de France, the stage where you delivered your greatest performance. The curtain will rise again and you don’t want it to fall a final time. It’s another of those defining moments, like 2009, like 2018. They say you’re finished. You don’t listen. You won’t be denied a last tango in Paris.
