To even make it on a British & Irish Lions tour, you have to put yourself through the wringer.
Still, the slog on training and playing pitches is worth it when you can celebrate series victories with 007…
Back in February, Warren Gatland voiced some pretty valid concerns about Johnny Sexton’s health and well-being as bi-weekly fitness updates were offered on the Ireland.
Regarding the Lions tour, Gatland said he was looking for players to travel to New Zealand and ‘hopefully keep their bodies together and last for the six weeks’.
Johnny Sexton admits it was that line of thinking from Gatland that forced him to play on, but not through, a contact injury. At the re-branding launch of Rugby Players Ireland [formerly IRUPA], Sexton stressed that he was generally been lucky with injuries. Generally.
“I’ve never had the sort of nine month or a year out,” he said after a brief pause to touch wood.
“Over the last year or two, I’ve picked up these small little muscle twinges that really frustrated me, when you have to come off pitch.
“That can be prevented and I spent six weeks out in Santry working with the best guys in making sure that they didn’t happen again. Then I stupidly got a dead calf and played with a dead calf against Castres because I felt I needed to prove that I was durable and because I needed game time.
“I paid the price for that and missed the start of the Six Nations.”
That he did and while he returned to steer Ireland to victory over France, damage had been done in the opening day loss to Scotland. Since his return, though, the 31-year-old feels his body is ‘in a really good place’.
Sexton’s fitness issues track back to 2013. While age and an accumulation of bumps, bruises and strains are factors, he agrees that his two-year stint in France with Racing 92 tested him physically. He says:
“When you go over there as a foreign player, you’re going in as marquee players and they want to get their money’s worth,” says Sexton. “I suppose you don’t help yourself sometimes.
“I went over there after a Lions tour [in 2013], I had two weeks off, got married, had a week’s honeymoon and then played a warm-up game at the start of August. The last Lions Test was the start of July and so I didn’t really have a break.
“I think I played 14 games in 13 weeks… I was the only out-half that was fit for that time and I probably paid for it after that. Probably not that season, but maybe the season after where you don’t have another pre-season.
“It is tough and it’s only then when you see how unbelievably well we are looked after here by the IRFU and Rugby Players Ireland now, how good a job they do making sure that the players are at the forefront of player welfare.”
Sexton got through 80-minute stints against Wales [albeit with two trips off the pitch] England and Wasps in recent weeks. He feels there is still scope for improvement as the stakes are raised.
He says, “[We have] Connacht, Clermont, the run-in in the Pro12, hopefully a European final, hopefully Guinness Pro12 knock-out rugby and then some type of tour in the summer – touch wood – so it’s only going to get tougher, but that’s the challenge and I’m loving it.”
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