Jonathan Sexton:A broken jaw robbed the Leinster outhalf of a spot in the Heineken Cup semi-final. He intends to make amends tomorrow, writes Johnny Watterson.

ONE OF the themes Leinster coach Michael Cheika touched on this week was how to manage and rotate players so that he pushed individuals towards the edge but never over. Sometimes, said Cheika, it was intuition. A player looks jaded, pull him out of training. A player is undercooked for a match after injury, don't risk him.

Jonathan Sexton was a case in point prior to the Heineken Cup semi-final. Fit and eager, the Leinster outhalf had a plate inserted in a broken jaw. He could capably play against Toulouse but the issue settled around the consequences if he shipped a knock to the face. Sexton didn't play, while Biarritz number eight Imanol Harinordoquy lined out against Munster with a face mask protecting a broken nose. Two injuries. Two different calls. A lot of frustration for Sexton.

“Yeah, exactly, it’s more frustrating when you’re 100 per cent fit everywhere else and you can’t play, and the only other thing you can do is eat,” he says.

“It was incredibly frustrating but I feel fresh now at the end of the season and hopefully, that will stand to me.”

The temptation for Sexton was to have the medical team create a Phantom of the Opera apparatus that would have allowed him to play and take contact, even on the repaired part of his jaw.

“I asked the doctor about that for the Toulouse game but it’s harder to get in because your jaw moves sideways as well,” says Sexton.

“It’s not like a nose or cheekbone. You’d basically have to keep your mouth closed and it wasn’t really an option. I was weighing up what would get me through the game without breaking it again and what would allow me to do my job properly. We sort of said I couldn’t go out and give it 100 per cent so we decided it was best for the team just to leave it.”

He didn’t sidestep the game without a fight and at one stage the doctors even considered taking the wires out of his jaw if he decided to override their decision and take to the pitch in France.

“I tried to finalise that I could play,” he explains.

“We asked the doctor. He just recommended that I didn’t. You have to listen to them sometimes. I don’t think I would have felt too confident going out there. I wouldn’t have been able to go out and give it everything. I couldn’t let the team down by missing a tackle or not putting my body on the line.

“The doctor said that if I was going to play – he probably had a feeling that I was going to – he’d take the wires out for me a bit early.”

Sexton has lost maybe half a stone in weight. A diet of blended sweet potato and carrot, with some fish mashed in, has kept him reasonably fuelled. Baby food on a spoon for one of the youngest players on the team “slurped in” maintained his condition.

The jaw wasn’t wired tight shut as in some cases so he didn’t have to take everything through a straw, which probably would have resulted in greater wastage.

Today, though, he is match ready. The jaw has been tested and the psychology of putting his head in tackling positions where it will almost certainly get hit has been confronted. Munster’s Keith Earls helped him along with that.

“I missed a poor tackle at the start of the Munster game on Keith Earls when I normally would have gone low. But I went high because I didn’t want to stick my head in there,” he says.

“But once I got a proper tackle in, after that I was fine. In training this week it’s been fine, I got a bang on it a few times. Once you know it’s going to hold up, that it’s not going to break again, you’re fine.

“Against Munster I got a bang on the other side and in training I got a bang on the broken side, so I think the plate is doing the job.”

Sexton’s three penalties and a conversion in Leinster’s defeat of Munster in the semi-final has road-tested his game and his jaw. But in Dan Biggar, the outhalf threat is from an increasingly influential young player on the way up and not from an experienced head like Ronan O’Gara.

With James Hook there, too, Ospreys have natural playmakers. Factor in Mike Phillips, Shane Williams, Lee Byrne and Tommy Bowe and the challenge could be overwhelming.

Not for Sexton. “They have serious players across their team and their backline is unbelievably impressive. Teams do raise their game especially coming over to the RDS,” he says flatly but largely unperturbed. “If we’re going to be a successful team then we’re going to have to live with that.”

Dream Team

LEINSTER'S BRIAN O'Driscoll, Leo Cullen and Jamie Heaslip have been named in the Magners League Team of the Season along with four Ospreys players, Tommy Bowe, James Hook, Adam Jones and Jerry Collins.

Scrumhalf Tomás O'Leary was the only Munster player to make it into the 15-man team selected by 16 media pundits. Bowe polled the highest of all the players with 12 votes as a winger and one at centre, writes Johnny Watterson.

15 Ben Blair (Cardiff Blues)

14 Tommy Bowe (Ospreys)

13 Brian ODriscoll (Leinster)

12 James Hook (Ospreys)

11 Tim Visser (Edinburgh)

10 Dan Parks (Glasgow Warriors)

9 Tomas OLeary (Munster)

1 Gethin Jenkins (Cardiff Blues)

2 Ken Owens (Scarlets)

3 Adam Jones (Ospreys)

4 Leo Cullen (Leinster)

5 Ali Kellock (Glasgow Warriors)

6 Jerry Collins (Ospreys)

7 John Barclay (Glasgow Warriors)

8 Jamie Heaslip (Leinster)