Johnny Sexton confident Ireland will reach their peak for Scotland clash

Okay, we have trust issues. The public with the Irish team. The Irish team with the media. All those fans, who after the match against England had their World Cup tickets flash into view in a thought bubble above their heads with ‘I could sell them on Done Deal’ written inside.

It has come down to this. A belief that Joe Schmidt has got it right, that Ireland's push to peak for Scotland in less than 20 days' time is a well timed run for Yokohama Stadium.

A frustrated Johnny Sexton, who will feature this weekend against Wales, has had to watch it unfold. The outhalf is a believer in Schmidt and perhaps with his faith detector wildly twitching in the face of a less convinced audience, also has confidence in strength and conditioning coach Jason Cowman.

The buy in is total.

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“It’s all going to be judged in a few months’ time,” says Sexton, who will be playing in his third World Cup. “But what we’ve done so far is we’ve trusted the process because we’ve got one of the best guys in the world in Jason Cowman and he puts the plan together and the plan is for us to peak over the next few weeks and peak for that Scotland game.

“Yeah, within that, there’s obviously really tough weeks like the England week, which is also designed in there,” he adds.

The England week is the week the damn burst, the window shattered, the roof fell in, the belief faltered. It is why Cowman has become a central figure. England repeated what they had done in the Six Nations and a sea of faithful Paddies became a swoon of doubting Thomases.

“Maybe Wales had that last week after coming back from, I think they were in Turkey,” says Sexton. “So they’ll probably be better this week because of that. Everyone is at different stages of their preparation in the warm-ups and then it all comes to fruition in the World Cup time.

“We trust in the process. It’s easy for us. We just put our head down and work as hard as we can and get told when to stop.”

Boxing off England before facing an arguably better Welsh team isn’t really the best use of a thrashing. Perhaps more absolute in their thinking that to suffer is to purge, the English result has become a useful vehicle for Irish self flagellation – without the self loathing.

“We’ll use that England game for a long time to refer back to,” says Sexton. “Shows when you don’t prepare as well as you can and when you don’t turn up on the day as well as you can.

“But we also refer to all the good times over the last few years that sometimes gets forgotten with a defeat like that. We take great confidence from what we have achieved and we often refer back to that. So it’s trying to balance things out really.”

In the final reckoning Schmidt, in Sexton’s eyes, has been the driving force in much of what has been excellent in Irish rugby. With weeks or months remaining before the Kiwi leaves his coaching post, the World Cup has assumed an over-arching importance.

A quarter-final would place him modestly among past coaches although Schmidt’s win record is above 70 per cent and leads the field as far back as Murray Kidd in 1995.

"Joe, impact-wise, with Leinster to start off and with Ireland, has been phenomenal," says Sexton. "Records speak for themselves. To do what he did in Leinster . . . we got to six finals in three years, we won four of them and to go on with three Championships with Ireland. But then also the special games where we've done things for the first time. All the firsts were probably the most special.

“We’ll miss him in terms of what he brings, what he has brought. But we’ve got to have that in the back of our mind. He’ll drive it. He won’t be saying anything about himself. But we will. We got to go back to driving the performance and build that momentum we need to have for Scotland.”

He’s believing okay. After Saturday maybe more will follow.