Johnny Sexton: Joe Schmidt’s drive has pushed us this far

Jonathan Sexton was just four months and five caps into his international career this time eight years ago as he sat in the Shelbourne Hotel and listened to the head coach geeing up the troops ahead of Ireland’s last Six Nations outing.

The championship was beyond them, a heavy defeat to the French in Paris seeing to that in round two, but there was still something solid to play for as Scotland came to town for the Irish side’s last game in residency at Croke Park.

“Declan Kidney spoke about how Triple Crowns were hard to come by and I looked around and saw Ronan (O’Gara) and Paul (O’Connell) and Brian (O’Driscoll) sort of roll their eyes up to heaven, as they had four of them at that stage,” Sexton remembers.