On Thursday, at Carton House, Johnny Sexton was asked why many of the current squad – from the outside, looking in – felt it was a bad thing to say an Irish victory over England is cherished more than others.
“Is it a bad thing to say?” Sexton responded. “It’s obvious that we want to beat them.”
The Irish outhalf expanded on the point:
“Look when you’re playing for Ireland, it matters, no matter who you’re playing. I’d like to think that even if we lose a game, the people see that the effort that’s put in, and how much it means to us to play for Ireland, that’d be the same this weekend.
“Yeah it will be a little bit more special, normally when you turn out for England, the crowd are extra special. I don’t know what the crowd will be like – it could be 50:50 English Irish, the game that’s in it for them. But we’ll go out and try to make everyone proud, and I think the country does lift itself when we play against England.”
This Irish team has certainly done the nation proud at several high points over the past three and a half years [since Joe Schmidt took charge] but they are in a rough patch right now.
Schmidt told us his team’s immediate goals were, in the following order, finishing second in the Six Nations table and retaining our world ranking of No.4 to get a top seeding for the 2019 World Cup.
Halting the English win machine and preventing them from claiming successive Grand Slams was not mentioned. All well and good until Schmidt got onto the topic of Ireland’s relationship to England. He commented:
“Games against England, no matter what they are, are just big anyway.
“They are the big brother. They are the guy you look over your shoulder and you are a little bit envious of. You always going to try to get one over your big brother.
“I think that’s a natural personality trait but, at the same time, there’s a little bit of angst and anxiety when the big brother is looking over the fence.”
Schmidt has been in Ireland seven years and got his citizenship for this country back in 2015. On the day, he remarked, “I wanted to be Irish without being plastic.”
The Kiwi gets so much about what we do and what makes us tick. In describing Ireland, a nation that has made massive strides as an independent nation going on as century now, as an envious little brother is, in our opinion, wide of the mark.
Plenty may agree with his sentiments but an awful lot will not.
