Paul O'Connell, one of an exclusive club of just six players to reach a century of caps for Ireland, has paid a glowing tribute to Johnny Sexton on the eve of him joining that elite band in tomorrow's Autumn Series opener against Japan (kick-off 1pm).
Comparing him to Roy Keane and Henry Sheflin, Sexton’s former teammate turned Irish assistant coach has given an insight into what it is that has made Ireland’s current captain so durable, so driven and so consistently good.
“I think winning makes him want winning more,” said O’Connell. “Winning doesn’t take the edge off. He moves on from winning very quickly.
“Sometimes if we win badly, he almost treats it like a loss, if we don’t play well, don’t perform well, if we don’t execute what we want to do. I think that’s a big thing.
“I compare him to a Henry Shefflin or a Roy Keane, winning doesn’t take the edge off him. That’s the biggest thing he’s brought to Irish rugby and Leinster rugby. I think that’s one of the big reasons that he’s had such a big influence on the teams he’s been involved in.
“Some guys have big lofty goals and when they achieve them they take their foot of the gas or they allow their teams to take their foot off the gas. He just pushes harder and harder. And he has credibility with it because, despite what he may look like, he’s great fun, he’s great craic around the place. He builds relationships with people. When a guy you’ve built a relationship with drives you to a higher standard, you tend to react quite well to it.
“When I played, he was a great guy to have as a captain on the team because he didn’t wait for other people to lead or he didn’t look for the captain to always be on top of people. He just drove the team on relentlessly himself. The way he reacts to winning is the big thing for me.”
When asked what’s required to reach a century of Tests for your country, the 108-times capped, legendary former Irish lock said: “You have to love it. You have to love training, you have to love being part of the team and trying to make the team better.
“You’ve got to love the days that some other guys don’t love sometimes.
Those tough away games with your province when you need to dig out a bit of form or the work you do when you’re injured to make sure you can come back at 75 per cent of where you were and not 50 per cent of where you were. In how you prepare and how you train you probably build trust with the coaches that they want to select you. They feel you’re an important part of the team.
“A lot of the guys that have got to 100 caps, I think they’re an important part of the team as players but they’re probably an important part of the team in terms of their leadership and their attitude and in terms of how they bring the team forward as well.
“I think loving it and loving training, loving preparing, loving being part of the group is one of the things that probably allows you to be consistent over time, allows you to keep putting your hand up for selection.”
It was also interesting to hear O’Connell’s take on an Irish selection which is so heavily Leinster loaded. Not only does the starting XV feature 12 players from the province, but a dozen of the team came through the Leinster academy, including the Munster duo of Tadhg Beirne and Andrew Conway, with the other coming through the New Zealand system - Jamison Gibson-Park, James Lowe and Bundee Aki.
“For sure, I’d say every province wants to have more Irish players in their squad,” said O’Connell, who also played 178 times for Munster, where he was a two-time Heineken Champions Cup winner, captaining them to their second triumph in 2008.
“I remember when I first came into the Munster team under Declan Kidney, we had a big goals sheet and one of the top goals was more Munster players playing for a winning Ireland.
“I’m sure it is a concern for the provinces. It makes them produce players. It makes them go and work hard on their domestic game structures, their school structures, it makes them go and work hard on their academy structures to keep producing players.
“But in my time travelling around the provinces, I just see incredible work being done. I see the level of coaching now in the provinces, I think it’s fantastic, and then the level of coaching underneath that in some of the academies is fantastic as well.
“From our point of view, I only found out about it yesterday when I read about it so it’s not something we ever pay attention to or discuss or worry about. We just try to pick what we think is right on the day.”
Following on from Japan’s World Cup pool win in Shizuoka and Ireland’s hard-earned 39-31 victory last July, O’Connell is expecting another searching examination against the Brave Blossoms.
“They’re an excellently coached team. That’s what Andy said coming into the summer. At the World Cup, they had brilliant players but they were brilliantly coached as well.”
“They’re coached the right way. They’re not over-coached to the point where they have a little bit of paralysis. They still have this attitude to go and play. They seem to be backed to chase the unpredictable, chase offloads, take chances.
“Then they have incredible structure as well. We would have watched a good bit of the Highlanders in Super Rugby where Tony Brown was coaching. You were getting a lot of these highly-scripted plays and they’re brilliant to watch as well.
“Japan have a brilliant balance that way. James Moore is really experienced now as a lineout caller so they get brilliant ball off the lineout. They scored a maul try against us during the summer and a big part of Australia getting a result against them was how they stopped that part of their game.
“Sometimes they’re really scripted but they seem to have a real license to offload and go play, then they can pick teams off with maul tries. We have a bad memory of a scrum at the World Cup in the back of our minds. They have great balance, excellent coaching and they work very, very hard.
“That’s something we pride ourselves on so when we see it in another team, we recognise it. They work incredibly hard to attack and defend well, so the boys are under no illusions about how hard it’s going to be.”
