Tommy Martin: Sexton at 10 is like corporation tax and the Gulf Stream, precarious but vital

VITAL: Ireland's Johnny Sexton.

The anxiety that comes over Irish rugby fans whenever Jonathan Sexton gets injured is of a very specific kind. It is full of context and nuance and revealing of the national mindset.

Sexton at number 10 is like corporation tax and the Gulf Stream, a thing whose existence is precarious and without which Ireland would be banjaxed. Interest in his welfare is more than the normal concern about a key player. For the Irish team, it is existential, fundamental, foundational.

If we were Germans we would have a special compound word for it, something like Sextonslosigpanik. It would be used in any situation where something of critical importance is at constant risk, not just ones involving injury-prone 38-year-old out-halves with a fondness for rough and tumble.

His likely absence from at least a portion of the upcoming Six Nations has brought on another bout of Beckettian introspection: we must cope, we can’t cope, we’ll cope. Or maybe we won’t. More important is the looming confrontation with Ireland’s white whale, the Rugby World Cup. Any other nation approaching that tournament as the world’s number one ranked team would be brimming with confidence. For Ireland, Sexton’s latest injury is just the start of things going inevitably and disastrously wrong.

The fact that it happened in his first start after his last injury is further grist to this troubled mill. The visible dent in his cheekbone sustained against Ulster came from a tackle typical of the out-half’s unsparing nature, to the point where some felt it should have earned him a spell on the naughty step as well as the treatment table.

Watching Sexton in his committed dotage puts you in mind of the stories about a nonagenarian Prince Philip driving his Land Rover recklessly about the grounds of Balmoral estate, to the horror of Royal aides who would plead with the old duffer to exercise more caution after another prang against some ancient rampart.

But Sexton’s value to his country far exceeds that of the late Duke. Other than Connacht’s PRO12 title in 2016, he has been the cornerstone of any success that Irish rugby has enjoyed in the last decade. He started all of Leinster’s European Cup final wins. For evidence of international glory that does not involve Sexton, archaeologists must dig back to primaeval times when mythical beasts like Paul O’Connell and John Hayes roamed the land.

In the dark of night, Irish rugby supporters might find themselves tossing and turning and wondering whether any of the achievements of the last ten years would have happened had Sexton not been around, barking and cajoling his teammates into formation like an irate sheepdog. If fate had not introduced the scowling, chubby-cheeked Sexton into the Irish rugby story back in 2009, would we, whisper it, be any better than Scotland?

To look through the supporting ranks in the years after Ronan O’Gara was nudged into retirement is to find little consolation in this counterfactual history. Would any of Ian Madigan, Paddy Jackson, Ian Keatley or Jack Carty have led Ireland to glory were the boy Sexton to have found some other passion in life? It seems unlikely.

It is this weighty reality that the current batch of understudies must deal with whenever called upon by Sexton’s infirmities. Joey Carbery is next cab on the rank, a player about whom the jury seems to be eternally considering its verdict. Carbery has a respectable back catalogue, finishing out some big Irish wins and performing manfully in defeat in Paris last February.

Injuries have held back him back but perhaps too a natural diffidence in sharp contrast to the incumbent, whose unceremonious storming of the O’Gara citadel back in the day was referenced by Shane Horgan on Virgin Media during last season’s Six Nations.

“If you look at when ROG and Sexton were there,” Horgan said, “Sexto came in and said ROG 'you’re gone, you’re useless', he didn’t rate him…It’s almost that youth has to come in and take over and say this is mine now, my time is here, and Joey isn’t quite there. It doesn’t feel like he’s at the point where he says, ‘Sexton, get out of here, I’m taking over’.” 

The other pretenders all have promise, as well as the tidy haircuts and non-threatening good looks prerequisite of top-class out-halves. They even include Ross Byrne, the man who deputises for Sexton so ably at club level and whose match-winning penalty against the Wallabies in November will have done his international standing no harm.

Young Jack Crowley is the most exciting of the bunch, the one who might have a bit of the Napoleonic strut required for the job. But there’s a touch of Junior Masterchef about them all when compared to the work of the main man. Wow Joey, these scrambled eggs are amazing, well done.

The sense that Sexton exists at a whole other conceptual level was only confirmed in his absence last November. After marshalling Ireland to victory over South Africa, Sexton was rested for the Fiji game and pulled up lame before Australia. Both games, though won, were strange, bitty, directionless affairs. Neither skipped along to the regular bandleader’s rhythm, despite the best efforts of the replacements.

Those who know about these things talked about how his presence dictates the colour of the air around this Irish team. It is the house that Johnny built. Various coaches have knocked a wall here or put in a picture window there, but it is him standing on the front lawn in his underpants holding a shotgun.

Ultimately this is the root of the Irish rugby fan’s Sexton neurosis. They know that Ireland’s only hope of a World Cup breakthrough rests on him staying fit enough to play a succession of big games in consecutive weeks. They fear it is unlikely that he will. What follows would be another World Cup failure for the Irish team’s detractors to enjoy. The Germans have a word for that too.