On the Friday night before the Ireland squad assembled for the Italy game three weeks ago, Jonathan Sexton walked into a small recording studio in south Dublin. He had just flown in from Paris that afternoon and was keeping a promise he had made some time before to feature on the rugby podcast Down The Blind Side.
He was in good time and mixed easily with the handful of people there as the scene was being set. If you had come across him then – quietly spoken and utterly unaffected – you would never have put him in the same space he would occupy for Ireland two weeks later against France.
At 6ft 2in and 92kg Sexton togs out a bit bigger than he looks in his civvies. His personality changes as well: from low-key and unassuming to intensely competitive, demanding and very difficult to live with. The Ireland prop Mike Ross raised a few laughs recently when he described how Sexton’s bitching on the training field has got him into trouble with pretty much everyone at some point.
But then there would be the dilemma of how you could safely slap him around the head without damaging the team’s chances of success on matchday.
Interestingly, that was a conundrum that did not deter Juandré Kruger, Sexton’s team-mate at Racing Métro, when the situation arose there last May but in Ireland Joe Schmidt would be all over the corporal punisher like a rash. The coach and his playmaker are not just on the same hymn sheet, they are in perfect harmony.
Which is why, after Sexton’s three months out of the game with a head injury, Schmidt dropped him straight back into the cockpit for the France Test two weeks ago. Sure enough, he hit the right notes from the start in what was a massively physical encounter. Sexton getting back up to speed so fast did not surprise his old Leinster half-back partner Eoin Reddan, who returns to the Ireland bench for the England game in place of Isaac Boss.
“That’s the first thing I said to him after the game, his first 20 minutes were pretty impressive,” Reddan says. “I suppose the confidence he approached the game with and the skill level he produced, you’ve got to say ‘hats off’ to him after being away that long. It was great to see from him from a personal point of view, he’d worked hard on the things he could work hard on and it just shows you can play after time off if you work on the right things when you’re not playing.”
Even so, was there not some surprise that he could go from a standing start to the pace of Test rugby without looking like he had been away? “No, not really,” Reddan says. “I suppose the thing was there’s a big difference between someone being out for three months and not running for two of those months, or has a bad shoulder and can’t pass for two of those months. What he did really well, and what was an incredible achievement after three months, was his passing and kicking were on the money.
“As a half-back, if they’re there [those skills] you can approach it with confidence. I’ve had the same in the past. If I’ve had an injury where I could get through my passing and box‑kicking in training the challenge for the weekend is not as big.
“His kicking was excellent, his passes were excellent and I think that was the key, that he’d worked on them when he wasn’t playing. I think everyone could see that there weren’t going to be any problems from what he was doing in training.”
In the Ireland-England fixture two years ago Sexton hobbled off, hamstrung, after just half an hour – with Simon Zebo gone after 10 minutes – and was a picture of frustration watching Ireland lose the kicking battle, the physical battle and ultimately the game.
Without him at No10 Ireland went into freefall and had their worst finish – fifth – in Six Nations history. At that stage of Sexton’s career Ronan O’Gara was still in the background – and replaced him that day – but effectively the contest was over between them despite Declan Kidney having taken his time to come round to the Leinster man as the unquestioned starter.
From the moment Joe Schmidt succeeded Kidney that was not an issue. What they had at Leinster they carried on with Ireland and did not change one iota when the fly-half took himself off to Paris to hook up with Racing.
Given the importance Schmidt has invested in the kicking game, Sexton’s role as team leader is even further out front. Their relationship can be measured best in how willing the fly‑half is to execute a “boot first” strategy.
His body language in Paris for most of last season illustrated his discontent at having to leather away so much ball in the Top 14. With a more sophisticated policy from Schmidt, however, and with his fellow Lion Conor Murray sharing the load, it allows him to paint a picture of just how well he picks and executes his shots.
Sexton will be 30 in the summer by which point he will be, barring injury, on the cusp of 55 caps. He is at the top of his game, which is reassuring to Ireland supporters looking for the first back-to-back Championships since 1948 and 1949. That will not happen without having their fly-half in the zone – not the quiet, unassuming version tucked out of the way but the other one: out front, narky and demanding.
