Many have tried and many have failed.
Wales must have been cursing their luck when they watched the Ireland v France game back.
Jonathan Sexton made his return from a lengthy injury lay-off and they had to witness the 31-year-old put in a performance of a man in his prime.
Any doubts of his ability due to his lack of time on the pitch were firmly put to bed.
Now, Wales will have to come up with some sort of plan to stop Sexton in his tracks, knowing that if they don’t, then the likelihood of a third defeat for the Welsh in this year’s championship will become all that greater.
Shane Horgan believes that Wales will use their blitz defence spearheaded by Dan Biggar as a tool to do this.
Not a bother to him https://t.co/QGjj4Z8WyQ
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) March 5, 2017
Many teams have tried their best to rattle Sexton, late and often high hits have become the norm when we see the former St. Mary’s man line out in both green and blue.
Biggar has played against Sexton a number of times in his career and he is all too familiar with what Ireland’s talisman can offer.
“Johnny is a world-class player and he runs the show for Ireland,’ Biggar told the Daily Mail.
“Whenever you play against Johnny if you are not 100 per cent on your game, it will be a difficult afternoon.Â
“That is the biggest compliment I can pay to him.”
It would be naive for Biggar and for the rest of the Welsh team to not target Sexton in some way.
The word ‘target’ can often lead many to believe something illegal may be occurring on the pitch but if Wales are going to win on Friday then they will need to negate the potential influence which Sexton can have on the game.
“It is up to us as a team to make his life as difficult as possible.”
How they do this, remains to be seen but you can fully expect Sexton to be under severe pressure in the Principality Stadium on Friday and how Sexton reacts to that will likely determine the outcome of this game.
