AS THE CAMERA panned to Johnny Sexton during the second-half of Ireland’s shock defeat to Japan, it wasn’t too hard to guess how the out-half was feeling.
Watching on, powerless to do anything to prevent his team-mates from being at the receiving end of one of the biggest shocks in World Cup history, was a miserable experience.
“It was obviously a tough game to watch,” said Sexton this evening in Kobe, after Ireland had arrived from Shizuoka via bullet train this afternoon.
“They all are, even if things go brilliant. It’s tough to watch when you’re not involved, very frustrating.
“Obviously, things didn’t go our way and you you want to have things in your control. Watching from the stand, there’s not much you can do.”
If Ireland are to respond to this major setback, Sexton will be at the very heart of it.
It’s unclear exactly how badly injured Sexton was last week – Ireland reported it as a bang on the quad – or whether Schmidt had always intended to rest him for the Japan weekend.
It is clear, though, that his absence was felt by Ireland. Indeed, any team would miss having the reigning World Rugby player of the year in their starting team.
Sexton’s nous, demanding personality, physicality, and complete skill set would have been hugely helpful for Ireland when the going got tough.
Jack Carty, to his credit, showed his attacking qualities in the first quarter with two excellent assists and had some good kicks over the course of the game, but he was not error-free.
“One thing about this team is that we back the squad, the 31 guys,” said Sexton of having to miss out.
“When we picked the squad, we said that everyone that was here was ready to play. I picked up that strain against Scotland and I wasn’t going to train Monday, Tuesday. The preparation time is so short in a six-day turnaround that the guys made a decision for me to sit this one out.
“You want to play every game, especially in a World Cup, but hopefully I can pay back the whole squad with a good performance this week and beyond.”
Russia may feel the brunt of Sexton’s frustration at having had to watch on in Shizuoka, with the Leinster man set to return at out-half for Schmidt’s side in Thursday’s Pool A encounter in Kobe.
There is much to put right.
“It wasn’t one thing,” said Sexton when asked what had gone wrong for Ireland against Japan before going on to cite discipline, releasing pressure on the Japanese, and giving them too many “access points,” while the Ireland vice-captain also stressed the quality of the Brave Blossoms’ performance in beating his team.
Now, Ireland need a response and Sexton wants to be part of it over the coming weeks.
“We’ve got to figure out why it happened and the only blessing in disguise is that in the last two World Cups that I’ve been involved in… we’ve not cruised through the group but we’ve had everything go our way in the pool stages and then we’ve had the day that we had yesterday in a quarter-final and we’d be going home today,” said Sexton.
“The great thing now is that we’ve got the rest of the pool to get things together. We know, to a certain extent, that we’ve got things in our own hands in terms of if we can win the last two games and score a number of tries, we can definitely qualify for the quarter-final.
“If that’s in first or second place, that’s out of our control, so we won’t worry about that, that’s done now, so it’s up to us to put in two big performances and hopefully put ourselves into a quarter-final.
“We know if we do that, then we’ve got a chance.”
