Johnny Sexton has said that he was "extremely frustrated" coming off the field late in Ireland's underwhelming victory against Italy in the Guinness Six Nations at the weekend.
"How can you not be when you are doing as good a preparation as you did last year, you’re training as well as you did last year, you’re doing everything right and things just aren’t clicking," said the Ireland out-half, speaking in an interview with Virgin Media broadcast on their Ireland AM show.
"No one cares more than us. That’s the bottom line.
"I'm sorry if I let my frustrations boil over at times but that's part of me and I care a lot about the team. You don't always get things right but that's part of the job, when you care about it, things can boil over."
"I was unbelievably frustrated. How can you not be?"
He wasn't a happy man coming off the pitch in Rome. @JohnnySexton explains why here.
Watch the full interview with @sineadkissane on @IrelandAMVMTV tomorrow at 7.40am on @VirginMedia_One.#VMTVRugby pic.twitter.com/pAQA1MaHCa— Virgin Media Sport (@VMSportIE) February 26, 2019
Asked about Ireland's poor performances and why it is not clicking for them right now, Sexton said:
I could come out with three or four reasons but they will seem like excuses, so there’s no point in coming out.
We've shown glimpses in games of how good we can be. A good example would be Wales, poor in their first two games and then exploded in their last games against England. The difference between playing good and having that bad game are so small.
We said it when we were winning and you guys [the media] just think we’re throwing out the punch lines, the ‘margins’ and all that. But it’s not. They’re generally true and it’s something that we believed in.
We had a little bit of luck along the way last year to achieve the Grand Slam. Probably didn’t get the bounce of those balls against England and now we’re trying to find that sort of performance that we need to revive us again and get us going.
Sexton also rejected any suggestion that Joe Schmidt's announcement that he will step down as Ireland head coach following this year's World Cup had a destabilising effect on the team.
"I'm saying no to everything but I know you guys are looking for the reasons why we haven't been going ten out of ten. They're not the reasons. It's not a distraction really.
"We'll talk out Joe for years to come when he's finished but for the moment, it's just business as usual but little things haven't gone our way here and there and we're working incredibly hard to put it right."
Photo by Brendan Moran/Sportsfile
