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Ireland great Johnny Sexton has accused All Blacks star Rieko Ioane of a shocking sledge as the New Zealanders knocked the Irish out of last year’s World Cup at the quarter-final stage.
New Zealand held the Irish out for an astonishing 37 phases at the end of their 28-24 win – sending Ireland out at the QF stage for an eighth-straight tournament.
Sexton and Ioane were seen exchanging words after the epic battle. Sexton has released an autobiography – Obsessed – The Autobiography of Johnny Sexton – with sections printed in The Times newspaper over the weekend detailing his version of the incident.
Jonathan Sexton (Photo By Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile via Getty Images)
The Times published extracts from the book this weekend, detailing the aftermath of the defeat and Sexton’s view of the incident.
“I couldn’t bring myself to watch the quarter-final back. I don’t think I ever will. I don’t need to. I’ve mentally replayed every second, over and over,” Sexton wrote.
“It finishes the same way every time. Ronan Kelleher still ploughs into Brodie Retallick and Sam Whitelock. Whitelock goes in for the poach, clearly without releasing, but somehow Wayne Barnes awards him the penalty, even though it has all happened under his nose — and it’s all over.
“And as I stand there, hands on hips, staring in disbelief at Barnes, Rieko Ioane still comes up to me and tells me, “Get back ten metres.”
“Huh?
“Penalty,” he says. “Back ten.” And then, after Barnes blows the final whistle, he says, “Don’t miss your flight tomorrow. Enjoy your retirement, you c–t.”
“So much for the All Blacks’ famous “no dickheads” policy. So much for their humility. I walk after Ioane and call him a fake-humble f–ker. It doesn’t look great, me having a go at one of them just after we’ve lost. But I can’t be expected to ignore that.”
Sexton said he later got in touch with his former coach Joe Schmidt, who was with the All Blacks as an assistant in France last year.
“Joe was part of the All Blacks’ coaching team and we go back a long way. Typically, he’d been gracious in victory that night. He took time to say nice things to Luca [Sexton’s son], on the pitch, shortly after the game.
“The Barrett brothers — Beauden, Scott and Jordie — were real gentlemen, too, as was Ardie Savea, who had some lovely words of consolation for me. I appreciated that.”
Sexton admitted the pain of defeat was intensified by Ireland heading into the tournament as world No.1.
“I’m still convinced that we were the best team at the tournament, that our world ranking was accurate. I know I’m biased. And I know that South Africans — and others — will tell me to look in the record books. But it wouldn’t be the first time that the best side in a sports tournament didn’t end up winning it,” Sexton wrote..
“People have asked me if we were nervous before the quarter-final, if we felt “the weight of history on our shoulders”, if we did anything differently from previous games. Yes, we were nervous, but no more so than before any other game. Revisit the first couple of minutes and it’s the All Blacks who look incredibly jittery. I don’t believe history had any relevance.
We just didn’t play to our optimum, or even at 90 per cent capability. It’s virtually impossible to do that throughout a tournament. It’s inevitable that at some stage you’ll dip a little. We chose a bad day to dip.
“At 90 per cent plus, it’s easier to take variables out of the equation — variables such as the bounce of a ball or a referee’s bias against your loosehead’s technique, even when he is dominating his opponent in the scrum. Ninety per cent plus is what you need to overcome a New Zealand side who played probably their best game in two years, after that jittery start. They had been coached well, too. All three of their tries had their origins in the video analysis room. The All Blacks’ attack coach that day? Joe Schmidt.
“Afterwards I read that Faz [Andy Farrell] should have replaced me before the end. My legs had gone, they said. It’s true, my legs did go during that final 37-phase attack, which lasted all of five minutes and 50 seconds, during which I touched the ball a lot of times. But it’s not as if Faz could have replaced me in the middle of that attack. And if you go back and have a look at the minutes just before we started that attack, all of my contributions were positive.
“I was glad that Faz allowed me to stay out there and give every last drop. And I was proud that we stayed in the fight and came so close to pulling off what would have been one of the greatest comebacks. When our maul was going forward again with about eight minutes to go I was thinking we had done it. Jordie Barrett getting his body under the ball as Rónan Kelleher lunged for the line was a moment of brilliance. Fair play to him.
“At my captain’s meeting the night before the game, I’d said it as plainly as I could: We’ve gone past the stage where heroic near-misses are good enough. We needed to fulfil what we’d seen all along as our destiny. And we didn’t do that.”
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