It may have been the first Player of the Year award that Johnny Sexton has ever won for Leinster or Ireland but few would say that last night’s Guinness Rugby Writers of Ireland choice as the best player for the 2012-13 season arrived from left field.
The Racing Metro outhalf will be fit to play this weekend against Australia after resting for his club and against Samoa last weekend. A niggling hip injury has kept him quiet but his appetite for Ireland has been sharpened by being away from the international scene for almost nine months. Sexton's last game for his country was in the Six Nations Championship in February.
“It was a massive blow for me to miss out on the weekend,” he says. “I haven’t played since the Wales and England games in the Six Nations. It feels like ages since I put on the green jersey so I was mad keen to play.”
“It is probably my first time since school winning an individual award,” he added. “It’s not something you set out to achieve. You want to win things from a team perspective but at the end of the day it is nice to see your efforts recognised on and individual basis.”
More matches
The hip was not so much a debilitating injury as one that was playing on his mind to the back drop of a French season where he is expected to contest many more matches than he would have had to at Leinster.
That was always one of the pertinent issues and the enduring argument that Irish provinces have used to keep the top players at home.
Right now it’s a reality of rugby life but Sexton also understands it’s not in the Parisian club’s best interests to work him into a jaded automaton.
Injuries to Argentina's Juan Martin Hernandez, Jonathan Wisniewski and a match-shy Benjamin Dambielle ensured his first block of shifts would be on the pitch. But there's also a more openly pragmatic understanding to the new constraints under which he plays.
“Look I understood where the club were coming from. I was fit. I was ready to play. There was no reason for them not to pick me. They couldn’t really have said ‘oh, well he’s got a game for Ireland in a couple of weeks, we need to rest him.’
“They don’t think like that but they have to look after themselves and I have to do what’s best for the club because they’re my employers and that’s the bottom line.
'Tightened up'
"It wasn't anything to be concerned about," he adds about the injury. "Anything to do with the hip as a kicker . . . it was on my other side [non-kicking leg] . . . two weeks ago, it tightened up a little bit in training and I had to go Paris and sit on the bench the next day and it was at me a bit. I was a bit worried about it coming on.
“Thankfully the club chose not to bring me on and then Joe decided to leave me out. I got a scan and it showed a little strain and it was thought best to rest for the week and I didn’t train. Now it’s great.”
With Quade Cooper likely to play outhalf on Saturday and several new and bigger units along the Australian backline, there will be no easing back in. It’s not in his character anyway to coast along.
“He showed some really good signs against Italy in the bits I’ve seen so far,” he says about Cooper. “And he is a quality player. We’ve done a decent job on him in the past and we can take comfort from that.”
