Piecing together the perfect 80 minutes from a golden year for Irish rugby

The perfect team performance? It’s never going to happen from a coach’s or a player’s perspective.

So even after a calendar year so spectacularly successful for Ireland that even Johnny Sexton says he is having to pinch himself to see if it really happened, there were still flaws for the fly-half to pinpoint when he sat down for his Guinness Rugby Writers Ireland Player of the Year interview last Monday.