Waiting for Bastareaud bus nearly over for Sexton

The Youtube clip titled "Bastareaud et Sexton: L'histoire d'un bus et d'un piéton [the history of a bus and a pedestrian]" will displease Johnny Sexton.

But it’s coming again Sunday. Guaranteed.

This piece will become about Mathieu Bastareaud. It being the Monday after that Italian performance, a suggestion is being floated about that some Ireland players are allowing complacency seep into their minds.

“I can only speak for myself, but I knew it was going to be a tough game,” said Sexton. “But did everyone? I don’t know. I’d hope that we wouldn’t have been complacent, but maybe it’s a question we have to ask ourselves.

“I don’t know if it’s a wake-up call. I think we’re a pretty grounded group, but it was definitely a game we needed in terms of the physicality. We hadn’t seen that Italian team in our reviews. We dug deep, we won ugly . . .”

But before the Bastareaud examination, before Sexton’s tackling technique is analysed, before some platitudes are laid at Freddie Michalack’s feet, dealings with his old coach arise.

Hard-nosed Sydneyite

Michael Cheika always claimed not to be a rugby careerist, due to other business interests, and turning the Leinster brand into the marketing beast it has become was just a toe-dipping exercise before fashion or something else consumed the hardnosed Sydneyite.

From the exterior, as Australian outhalves played second fiddle to Felipe Contepomi with Sexton togging for St Mary's, it seemed like the pair would become embittered former bedfellows. Then Contepomi's knee twisted at Croke Park in May 2009 and both their worlds changed forever. They will always be the men who started the Leinster revolution.

"I still send the odd text to him . . . We've always got on very well and I was delighted to see him [at Twickenham]," said Sexton. "He's proved what a good coach he is. He's turned around Leinster, he's turned around New South Wales and he's turned around Australia. They look like a really formidable team. They look like one of the favourites to go on and win the World Cup now. So fair play to him, and hopefully catch up with him after the World Cup."

When asked for more ingredients to Cheika’s winning recipe, a laughing Sexton mentioned the personality trait natural to many powerful people. “Because everyone’s probably scared shitless of him, if I was being honest. He knows his rugby as well, he’s a very clever guy, but he does have that presence where he’s a pretty scary guy when you get on the wrong side of him.”

Greatest challenge

They will meet again. But not yet. Now comes the greatest challenge in a career already littered with high achievement. If Sexton, Joe Schmidt and Ireland are to separate themselves from historical consistency, they must go where the 1995, 2003 and 2007 World Cup teams failed miserably to go.

Beating France requires the halting of Bastareaud, and that means Sexton avoiding the same fate as the 2014 Six Nations encounter in Paris when the 19-stone centre knocked him cold with forearm to jaw.

“I think it’s been spoken about last year, when I came back from a couple of head knocks, that I need to tackle lower,” said Sexton. “But your head is just as exposed when you go low as it is when you go high, I think. The only thing I’d say is that when you go high, you’d expect the referees to keep an eye out for leading elbows or leading heads, and I think it’s up to the referees to look after that rather than me having to worry about it.”

In 2015 they collided again, face to face, in the 45th minute, and every Irish person shuddered, it being Sexton’s first game after a 12-week layoff due to repetitive head traumas and because blood poured from above his eye. No concussion.

On 75 minutes d'un bus came again, they clashed heads again, no concussion again, as Tommy Bowe and Robbie Henshaw came to the rescue.

Mixing it up

Sexton won’t stop tackling, but he has altered his technique.“I think I’ve tried to mix it up a bit more.” And he knows what’s coming. “They said before the last game they were going to come down my channel because I was obviously coming back from a layoff, and I don’t see it being any different this time. You always want to target the opposition 10.”

Speaking of 10s, how highly does he rate Michalak? "He's a guy that can change a game. You saw that with their first try against Canada; it was all about him." Still, privately, the Irish setup must be delighted to see unpredictable Freddie at pivot. Cheika wouldn't risk it; well, he didn't risk Quade Cooper, and Bernard Foley repaid that decision. Similar stakes here.

“We probably do need the best performance of Joe’s time to win this weekend.”