58 1GM Tuesday September 15 2020 | the times
SportRugby union
5
The latest round of the Maro Itoje
versus James Ryan heavyweight
showdown has been a long time in the
waiting. When the two lock forwards
clashed during England’s Six Nations
victory over Ireland in March, the
rematch was pencilled in for the follow-
ing month.
Now, it is finally upon us with
Saracens travelling to Dublin on Satur-
day to face Leinster in the European
Champions Cup quarter-final. It is a
re-run of last year’s final, in which the
English club prevailed and Itoje proved
himself once again to be a world-class
nuisance.
Clearly, much has changed for
Saracens since that day in Newcastle
tends to bring out the best in them both.
Ryan was monstrous in Ireland’s Six
Nations defeat, playing right on the
edge, scuffling with Itoje and Ellis
Genge, smashing rucks and leading his
team in dominant tackles. “Maro’s a
great player, pretty well rounded, the
overall package. He is very good around
the park, very good at the set piece, just
a very good operator. He can be a bit of
a nuisance at times but that’s the
strength of his game,” Ryan said.
“He’s very good at it and he’s very
disruptive, so we’ve got to make sure
we’re really nailed on, we’re primed and
ready to go. If we’re sloppy at the
lineout or the ruck we just give guys like
him access to the game.”
Leinster know the battle against Itoje
is mental as well as physical and they
have clearly spoken about how tohandle him. “He prides himself on
getting into the minds of the opposition
and being that nuisance,” Robin
McBryde, the Leinster forwards coach,
said. “He is just relentless in his ability
to spoil any quality possession. You are
going to have to be at your best.”
Saracens are having to adapt a game
plan that would have revolved around
Owen Farrell until he was banned.
Farrell has been running Leinster plays
in training, taking on the Johnny Sex-
ton role, with Alex Goode expected to
start at fly half and Elliot Daly at full
back. “Losing Farrell brings together
their team, Ryan added. “It will galva-
nise them.”
Leinster have the added motivation
of revenge. They have not lost since last
year’s final. “You don’t forget your
defeats,” Ryan said.Alex Lowe Deputy Rugby
Correspondent
Ryan determined to settle score and overcome Itoje ‘nuisance’ factor
but this is a fixture that they have tar-
geted since the Gallagher Premiership
clubs imposed relegation on them —
and Ryan is expecting more of the same
from his English adversary.
Itoje got under Ryan’s skin during
that final in Newcastle by extending his
long arms over a ruck and pulling the
Ireland international’s shirt back over
his head. There is a remarkable photo-
graph from the tetchy Six Nations
encounter at Twickenham earlier this
year that captured Itoje doing the same
thing to Ryan and CJ Stander at the
same time.
This time next year, all things being
equal, Itoje and Ryan will have just
returned from the British & Irish Lions
tour having played together in the Test
series against South Africa. For now,
they remain fierce foes and that rivalryGym pictures of Sexton have aimed to show the
35-year-old fly half is as hungry for action as everSexton fights the dying of the light
Owen Slot
Rugby Writer of the Year
P
art of the required armoury for
modern international players is the
ability to show that they are
unaffected by criticism and outside
noise, or at least pretend to.Occasionally we get a glimpse of exactly how
much of an act this can be.
As Ireland prepared for the World Cup in
Japan, not much more than a year ago, the
volume grew on a chorus of doubt over Rory
Best. The hooker was 37, captain and creaking,
and that was before Ireland were beaten 57-15 in
a World Cup warm-up by England. Post game,
every effort was made by Joe Schmidt, the head
coach, to persuade everyone that Best was his
man for the World Cup. For Best, though, the
conversation in his head could not have been
more different.
After that England game, he convinced
himself that, although there was less than a
month until the World Cup, it was time to quit.
He details this clearly in his autobiography: “I
was hampering the team and the best thing
would be for me to walk away,” he writes.
He is then selected for the following week’s
game, against Wales and, in his head, the game
becomes his own last-chance trial game. “All
right, I will play,” he writes. “But if it doesn’t go
well, I am out.”
An Ireland win against Wales then takes him
through to the World Cup. In Japan, Ireland are
thumped 46-14 by New Zealand in the quarter-
finals and Best’s 124-Test career finishes on a
question that can never be objectively answered:
whether he and his coaches pushed his
international career on too long.
When to call it a day is one of the big
questions. It is one, of course, that we in the
media try to answer — though not necessarily
with the relish that some readers may believe.
I wrote a number of times that the
international days of Mike Brown, the
Harlequins and former (we believe) England full
back, were over. It didn’t give me any pleasure;
he is a player I like and whose indomitable spirit
I admire. The 35-year-old is still raging against
the dying of a light that refuses to go out.
Sometimes we get it wrong. Post lockdown,
James Anderson, the 38-year-old England
bowler, had an average game against Pakistan in
the first Test. At a subsequent press conference
he explained that, contrary to some opinion, he
had no intention of retiring.
“I just don’t want every time I have a bad
game for there to be whispers going around that
I’m going to pack it in,” he said, not too
unreasonably. In no time, it seemed, he had
taken his 600th Test wicket.
Some, such as Best, can be hampered by self-
doubt. Brown, it seems, is the other extreme.
Johnny Sexton is at the Brown end of things,
aged 35 and flatly refusing to put an end-date on
one of the great careers even though many
others have already done so.
This is now the narrative: how much has he
got left? Will the embers burn out with Sexton
trying to prove that he still has the old fire? On
Saturday, in Dublin, when Leinster face
Saracens in a much heralded Heineken
Champions Cup quarter-final, we will see those
embers again.
You can build an argument that they are
already cooling. We know that the fly half
struggles more, now, to survive the increasingly
attritional game. Of course he does. But “big-
game players” do not have a quarter-final of the
kind that he did against New Zealand in Japan.
The Six Nations game against Wales last year
was another low. His last game before lockdown
was the distinctly cold performance in the
defeat by England at Twickenham. He will have
detested all those lockdown months with that
to stew on.
A profile in the Irish Independent recently
reported that “privately, some of his former
team-mates worry if a decline has set in”.
Sexton is not the kind of player you share
that opinion with. Even privately. “I can
see Johnny playing until he’s 42 if he
wanted,” Isa Nacewa, his former Leinster
captain, said. That is more the tone of
what he is likely to be getting from his
mates.
He is certainly driven by the pursuit of
longevity. Stuart Lancaster, his coach at
Leinster, sowed in his mind the idea of
Tom Brady, the ageless quarterback, and
still doing it in your forties.
Sexton then went into lockdown with
a book, given to him by Mick Kearney,
the former national team manager,
entitled Play On: The New Science of
Elite Performance At Any Age. That was
clearly right up his street. “I’m reading
it like the Bible,” he said recently.
He also said that lockdown had been
good for him: a unique opportunity “to start
again”. There then appeared images from the
Leinster gym, all hunky, very un-Sexton-like,
which the Irish public certainly enjoyed. Two
good post-lockdown performances against
Munster reinforced the idea that maybe he
could, indeed, start again.In the second of those Munster matches,
Damian de Allende, the strapping Springbok
ball-carrying centre, ran straight at Sexton, as so
many crash-ball men have before, and Sexton
won a penalty — for, of all things, holding him
up in a choke tackle.
Then, though, he was selected only on the
bench for the Pro14 final against Ulster last
Saturday. The Leinster management did their
best to sell this as player rotation and keeping
the entire squad on the boil — but really? With
your captain and talisman? Do they see the
embers of a career here, too — or just a formula
for keeping him burning as long as possible?
The fact is that Leinster still need him, and so
do Ireland. Old stars only fade when there are
new ones out there shining brighter and there is
little on the horizon. Ross Byrne, who played at
No 10 on Saturday in the Pro14 final victory, is
efficient, accurate with the boot, but never as
dynamic a player or leader as Sexton. For
Ireland, Joey Carbery has been groomed as
the successor, but that was a plan hijacked
by injury.
His spirit and leadership qualities are
not easily replaced. Leinster may yet
prove to be the best team in Europe,
but they are a nice, polite group;
no one is stepping up to say
“follow me” with the conviction
of their captain.
After the final whistle
went on Leinster’s 27-5 title
triumph at the Aviva
Stadium on Saturday,
the team’s reaction
was notably subdued
— which could be
because of the
empty stands.
In contrast,
though, was
the fist-
pumping joy of
Sexton — who had only been a replacement;
remember, he is as hungry for trophies as ever.
So Ireland are back where they were with
Best — with an aged captain trying to prove
that his best is not too far back in history. Yet
they cannot quite do without Sexton. Leinster,
too. The difference between Best and Sexton is
that the present captain adamantly refuses to
acknowledge that age may have caught him.
Saracens will test that theory to the limit.
This, surely the last chapter of Sexton’s
long, garlanded career, is both about defiance
and acknowledging when defiance is no
longer enough.Gloucester lose as fans return
Kingsholm welcomed back fans for
the first time since lockdown, but
the 1,000-strong Gloucester faithful
left frustrated after their side were
beaten 28-15 by Harlequins.
Tries from Cadan Murley and
Stephan Lewies helped Harlequins
build a 21-3 half-time lead. A third try
after the interval from Scott Steele
sealed the win and confirmed
Heineken Champions Cup rugby for
the away side next season.
Despite two second-half tries of
their own Gloucester were left to
rue several missed chances, and will
hope to improve before their derby
game against Bath next week.