Sexton: ‘Performance driven’ Ireland not focused on Cheika

Jonny Sexton has claimed the focus for Ireland is their own performance in the final match of the November test series against Australia on Saturday.

Sexton: ‘Performance driven’ Ireland not focused on Cheika

By Grainne McGuinness and Shaun Cronin

Jonny Sexton has claimed the focus for Ireland is their own performance in the final match of the November test series against Australia on Saturday.

The Racing Metro out-half was asked about confidence levels in the camp in the build-up to the game.

“I wouldn’t say it’s bulletproof,” he said. “This time last year we lost two matches against southern hemisphere teams, so we’ve improved our performances and that’s all we're concentrating on.”

“That’s the best thing about this set-up, we’re performance driven. So even though we got a good win against South Africa, we got told it probably wasn’t good enough in some areas and we’ve had to improve on that.”

He said they would be working to improve further as a team in the Aviva stadium on Saturday evening.

“We try to just keep improving, whether we lose or we win. We’re going out with the same focus to this game, we know Australia will have many similarities but will challenge us in different ways to South Africa.

"We’ve just got to be ready for that.”

Sexton played under Australia’s new coach Michael Cheika at Leinster for four years and said Ireland will have to be prepared for him to make changes to disrupt them.

“Cheika is a clever guy, he’ll change things up,” Sexton said. “He’s named a certain team, but we don’t know if that’ll be the definite team; they’ve got a lot of guys on the bench who can make a difference.”

“With Cheiks - he’ll change things a lot - he knows we’ll have done a lot of analysis and I’m sure he’ll throw a different picture at us on Saturday.”

The 29-year-old has no doubt Cheika will use his knowledge of the Irish players to his team’s advantage, however he noted the Ireland camp weren't worrying too much about it.

“Yeah, he’ll know us and he’ll try and tap into that. When we played against players that he worked with before he told us their ins and outs and strengths and weaknesses.”

But Sexton insisted: “Look, we're concentrating on our performance and that involves us trying to stop Australia. We’re trying not to get too bogged down with the Michael Cheika factor. We’ve got great respect for him; what he did for Leinster rugby and for Irish rugby.

"We’re all still in touch with him, I texted him to congratulate him on the new job. But we haven’t been in touch this week, we’ll catch up on Saturday after the game.”

When asked, Sexton said he was prepared for being targeted by the Wallabies, as it is a play he has faced before, but he felt Ireland could use a similar strategy.

“Maybe, it is a tactic of opposition,” he said. “We’ll make sure Bernard Foley makes a good few tackles at the weekend and I’m sure they’ll make sure I make a few.

“I obviously played for the Lions against New South Wales and I had a bit of a target on my head. Cheika had a good laugh about it after the game. It’s international rugby, you don’t get away with anything dirty or underhanded anymore. With the TMO, the ref can just go upstairs and ask.

“I’m sure it’ll be a tough international match, as they all are, and I’ll try and be as prepared as I can for everything that comes my way," finished Sexton.

*Breakingnews.ie reporter Shaun Cronin spoke to Irish Examiner rugby correspondent Simon Lewis about the upcoming match.

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