Johnny Sexton stood on the sideline with a katana in hand. The old samurai finally showed up to dispatch the troublesome opponent after his apprentices failed to so convincingly on the previous two occasions and … uh, let the sword slip out the bottom because he was holding it upside down by the scabbard and then tried to catch the exposed blade with his hand BUT that did not take away from the aura. Johnny Sexton isn’t used to handling katanas. While others were learning the Way of the Blade, Johnny Sexton was becoming the most complete Irish flyhalf that there’s ever been. Who’s to say who spent their time better?

It was Johnny.

Johnny spent his time better and it’s not even close.

♛ ♛ ♛

This was the performance that I thought Ireland would deploy in Shizuoka 2019 and that I hoped they would deploy in June 2021.

That light slapping noise you can hear off in the distance is me patting myself on the back quite aggressively for finally, two years later, getting that particular Green Eye right. Thank you. No further questions at this time.

What was the major difference between this Ireland and the Ireland that played Japan the previous two times to a loss and a narrow win? Quite simple. It’s Johnny Sexton. When we played Japan in 2019, Sexton was sitting in the stands. When we played Japan in June 2021, Sexton was off on holiday. When we played Japan in November 2021, Sexton was wearing the #10 jersey and dictating almost everything about the game.

No surprise then that Ireland won so dominantly. It isn’t all about Sexton, don’t get me wrong, but he is the ultimate passive stat boost for this Irish side. He makes the players around him better, simply by his presence. And it’s not just his inspirational qualities, or his high standards, or the responsibility he levers on himself.

Sexton is Irish Rugby’s singularity.

A singularity is when a culture changes so much that its rules and technologies are incomprehensible to previous generations and while playing under the stewardship of a generational talent at #10 isn’t new for Irish rugby based on the last 22 years, playing without one will be. As much as I’d love to be talking about a Usurper King vs Old Lion battle for that #10 jersey right now – not that I miss 2011’s Discourse you understand – I just can’t bring myself to logically make an argument for any of the younger options vs Sexton in the same way that one could have made that argument during the O’Gara/Sexton wars at the start of the last decade.

There are no realistic challengers for Sexton’s Ireland jersey at the moment. There just aren’t. That doesn’t mean guys like Carbery or Burns or one of the Byrnes can’t make a run at that jersey or that level in the medium term, but I haven’t seen evidence of that in them for a while or, in some cases, ever. The most accomplished of the players behind Sexton – Joey Carbery – came off the bench and did OK but was nowhere near the composure, efficiency and execution of Johnny Sexton during his time on the field. That’s a problem. Not for today, or next week (as long as Sexton doesn’t get injured at any point before the 60th minute of #IREvNZL) or even this side of Christmas but it’s a problem with 2023 on the horizon.

Sexton should be the experienced hand at this stage of his career, the closer, the old dog for the hard road, as long as the hard road in question is the last 15 minutes of a mid-level test match while the younger incumbent rests his legs for bigger challenges.

Instead, Ireland literally and metaphorically revolve around him. Look at the quality of his involvements on this sequence – four touches of the highest quality on the way to Ireland scoring a fabulous try.

None of these involvements are killer interventions in their own right but they display a real clarity of intent. Sexton sees, Sexton demands, Sexton executes. He knows exactly what he can and cannot do – to be expected of a 36-year-old with his collection of elite actions since his emergence in 2009 – but it’s an invaluable trait. Sexton rarely hesitates because he is almost always exactly where he expects to be. Sure, he was playing behind a team winning every other collision and the value of that can’t be understated, but any time I watch Sexton, I see a player fully in control of his spatial positioning.

On these exit plays after the restart with James Lowe as a key looped runner, you can see how in control of his spacing Sexton is, off the screen and as the link man. I’ve highlighted Lowe here to show how effective he was but Sexton’s usage of him – and the way he consistently called and then worked the space for him – was equally impressive.

When we compare that with some of Carbery’s involvements off the bench and just look at those previously mentioned qualities – clarity, efficiency, execution – it’s not really at the same level. Now the conditions are different, of course. Sexton was playing in front of a platform created in part by arguably the most on-ball dominant front row in Europe at the moment in Kelleher, Porter and Furlong with the outstanding Bundee Aki outside him, while Carbery did not.

A playmaker uses threats and platforms to play and there’s no doubting that Sexton’s available weapons were better but, that said, I felt that Carbery played a little within himself. Far from poor but not looking to punish Japan by attacking them like we imagine a Joey Carbery would. I’m talking about breaks not made, chances swiped away for safer options – things like that.

I want the guy who aims to be the new king to come off the bench and really go for it, especially with Japan wounded and gasping for air, especially when that guy is someone with the electric talents of Joey Carbery. That didn’t happen. It felt like an opportunity lost.

It didn’t matter in this game in the slightest, such was the dominance of Ireland’s victory.

The teams who force Sexton off-script – especially this 36-year-old version of Sexton – are usually the ones who find the most success against his teams, be they Leinster or Ireland. Japan were unable to do so in the face of vicious, highly effective Irish defence.

♛ ♛ ♛

In a game where you win by 55 points, I find it a little facile to focus too much on the tries scored. Ireland scored a lot of tries, with a lot of variety and it was really impressive. Our lineout maul absolutely destroyed Japan over and over again to massive gains and try-scoring opportunities. We scored long-range tries – with offloads! – we scored clever kick through tries, we scored well-executed close-range tries. That’s all fine, but it was something we expected. Ireland scored well against Japan in the summer and I projected we would here too, especially if the lineout worked, and it mostly did.

The key would be stopping Japan from building momentum through their clever kicking game, transition work, and intricate phase structures building to overloads. How do you stop that? By attacking their recycling of the ball at the breakdown and staying active in your channel.

Ireland prevented Japan from getting the kind of flow they normally use to chew through the phases at a great clip while forcing bad folds in defence. Once they get a bad fold, they start to flow through their structures and hurt you. Ireland got slowdowns right when we needed them and channelled up really well – that means we stayed lined up on our targets and didn’t drift inside our outside to worry about double hits because we know we had them inside and outside.

With that kind of dominance, Japan couldn’t strike back and counter Ireland’s momentum. When their lineout stopped functioning and they started bricking kicks to touch from penalties, the game was over – they just didn’t realise it.

The All Blacks will be a different challenge, of course, but for now, there’s nothing wrong with finally putting away a dangerous bogey team who have troubled us for two years and all in the kind of style Ireland were long accused of not possessing.

Notable Players

This was, as you’d expect with such a lopsided scoreboard, a game chock full of good performances for the Boys in Green Purple.

Ronan Kelleher, Andrew Porter and Tadhg Furlong were really, really good. In one respect it’s hard to judge them, such was the level of superiority they had over their opposite numbers and the Japanese pack in general. Porter had one or two wobbles in the scrum that the All Blacks will have noted but that was a minor blip in this game. This front row made Japan look like they had no business lining up against them. Brutal, in the best way.

I thought this was Andrew Conway’s best performance for quite a while. He was laser-focused, he was devastatingly effective under the high ball and his work rate off the ball was superb.

Watch Andrew Conway on this sequence. He goes from guarding the ruck to buzzing the outside shoulder for an offload, to looping around, communicating with Keenan, taking the ball and then bailing it off to Conan.

I gave Caelan Doris four stars on my initial watches of the game because I thought, well, that he’d played really well but it was only when I went through the game forensically, ruck for ruck on both sides of the ball that I finally got the full picture of how good he actually was.

This was a remarkable performance. Doris scored the highest offensive ruck score I have on record while also topping the charts for defensive breakdown effectiveness, and showing up well in the tackle and in the carry. Outstanding. ★★★★★

When he’s got that ball in the wider channels, he’s an incredibly difficult man to stop and, when he’s as willing a creator as he is, that can be a devastating combination. This was really good. ★★★★★

The Wally Ratings: Japan (H)

The Wally Ratings explainer page is here.  

Players are rated based on their time on the pitch, if they were playing notably out of position, and on the overall curve of the team performance. DNP means the player did not feature and N/A means they weren’t on the pitch long enough to warrant a fair rating.