Fiery Irish rugby star Johnny Sexton “hated” coming on tour to New Zealand.
In his just-released autobiography titled Obsessed, the former World Rugby Player of the Year has detailed at length the highs and lows of his career; which ended with 118 tests for Ireland.
The highs include being voted the world’s best player in 2018, winning Six Nations and Heineken Cup titles and Ireland’s first-ever series win over the All Blacks.
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The lows include numerous brushes with officialdom and team-mates after outbursts, and the sledging from All Blacks centre Rieko Ioane after Ireland’s 2023 Rugby World Cup exit; a match that was Sexton’s last.
That spat was serialised in the British media earlier this month, before the book’s official release in the UK several days ago.
And while Sexton heaps praise on ex-All Black Brad Thorn – a former teammate at Leinster – and Ireland’s former Kiwi coach Joe Schmidt in Obsessed, he doesn’t hold back from firing up about other issues that irked him, flowing on from clashes with the All Blacks.
“I loved Brad Thorn but I can’t say the same about New Zealand,” Sexton wrote in the book, published by Penguin Ireland.
“At least, I hated going there when it’s summer at home and it’s winter there, and when the rugby season has been going non-stop for 12 months because of the World Cup and you’re knackered.
“It’s the third straight year that you’ve been sent down there, and the All Blacks are now World champions, and really, if you don’t mind, I’d rather just lay my aching bones on a sunlounger in Portugal.”
He later added it usually rained when he was on tour in New Zealand, and the dark arrived too quickly daily in winter.
The “unprofessional” blunder Warren Gatland’s British & Irish Lions made before All Black series showdown
The British & Irish Lions have only won one test series in New Zealand.
Kiwi coach Warren Gatland and his touring squad arrived here in early June 2017 determined that they would be able to repeat the success of the 1971 Lions team.
The All Blacks won the opening test 30-15, before the Lions hit back to win the second 24-21, setting up a decider at a packed-out Eden Park.
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The dramatic third and final test ended in a 15-15 draw.
In his book, Sexton said the Lions made a huge off-field tactical error in the week leading up to the match.
“My biggest regret about that tour was what happened after Wellington, when we had some mandatory ‘bonding’ for a couple of days in Queenstown,” he wrote in Obsessed.
“The bonding idea took root because the 2009 Lions went on the piss in their final week in South Africa and ended up winning the final test. Big deal.
“The series was already over. The Springboks picked their second-string side in the last test.
“We did it again in Australia four years later, but it wasn’t like the test match squad were on the beer down in Noosa.”
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Ahead of the showdown for the All Blacks, Sexton said the Lions “did nothing except ‘bond’” at the start of the crucial week in Queenstown. The first time they hit the practice field was three days out from the test.
“We were supposed to be preparing for a series decider against the best team in the world at Eden Park. A shot at history. It was crazy. Unprofessional.
“As a result, I don’t think those Lions maxed out on their potential, not with the athletes we had at our disposal.”
Sexton said he wasn’t blaming Gatland solely for the mistake.
“I’m not pointing the finger solely at Gats here. I blame the senior players for not taking control of the situation and making sure we prepared properly,” Sexton wrote.
“I include myself in that. We had enough experience in that group to speak up. I wish I’d said something.”
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It wasn’t the only pre-match preparation that Sexton was critical of during the Gatland-coached team’s dramatic tour seven years ago.
Management decided that the team who played the opening match against the New Zealand Provincial Barbarians would travel from the team’s tour base in Auckland to Whangārei by road.
But the travel wouldn’t be via a team bus. Instead, players were loaded into the vehicles of one of the Lions’ sponsors for what turned out to be a lengthy trip north to promote the brand.
“We’d only touched down in New Zealand three days previous, having travelled the guts of two days across 11 time zones,” Sexton confided in Obsessed.
“After such an arduous trip, it takes at least a week to get sleep patterns on to local time, even with the assistance of melatonin tablets.
“So I found myself dozing off on the five-hour drive from Auckland to Whangārei in our sponsored 4x4s.
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“It was no way to prepare for a game and it shouldn’t be allowed to happen again.”
Kiwi fans added to Ioane’s cutting sledge post-retirement
In the weeks leading up to the release of Obsessed, its publishers serialised a section of the book in the UK press detailing Ioane’s cutting verbal attack on Sexton.
Ioane unleashed his spray on full time in the All Blacks’ Rugby World Cup quarterfinal win over Ireland – Sexton’s swansong – telling the Irishman: “Don’t miss your flight tomorrow. Enjoy your retirement, you c***”.
Sexton wrote: “So much for the All Blacks’ famous ‘no d***heads’ policy. So much for their humility. I walk after Ioane and call him a fake-humble f*****.
“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.”
Also in the book, he reveals that some of Ioane’s countrymen – ‘keyboard warriors’ based back in New Zealand – later joined in the abuse via social media.
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“During a quiet moment in the team hotel pre-departure, I’d made a rare enough visit to my Instagram page,” Sexton wrote in Obsessed.
“Normally, I’ll only ever see my ‘direct messages’, those posts sent by friends or people I follow. But this time, curiosity made me check my ‘requested messages’ – in other words, messages sent by anyone and everyone who felt inclined to do so.
“This included a few Scots, South Africans and Kiwis who wanted to give me a Rieko Ioane-style send-off. You get used to this sort of toxic waste after a while.”
Sexton’s happiest NZ memory – despite hotel horror
The former Irish No 10 isn’t lacking in reasons to bemoan his interaction with New Zealand during his lengthy test career.
But there were also some positives.
He rates Schmidt – who coached him at Leinster and Ireland – as one of the world’s best and most innovative coaches.
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New Zealand was also the scene of one of his – and Ireland rugby’s – most famous moments, when Sexton helped inspire his team to their first-ever test win on Kiwi soil, then a first series over the men in black, in 2023.
Sexton missed the second half of the first-up 42-19 loss to the All Blacks at Eden Park when he failed a head injury assessment after taking a knock.
The second test was in Dunedin, with Sexton recalling in his book: “Our hotel was the same as the one we used in 2011.
“It looked as though it hadn’t seen a lick of paint in the intervening 11 years, or a hoover.
“We made this a reason to laugh, rather than to mope. Seeing the positives in every situation was becoming a habit for us.”
Ireland won the second test 23-12, before securing the series with a 32-22 win in the third.
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“What we’d achieved – winning a three-test series in New Zealand – had never been done by any visiting team in the professional era,” Sexton wrote in Obsessed.
“Better still, we’d won from behind. ‘The hardest thing to do in rugby, by a country mile,’ as Faz [coach Andy Farrell] described it.
“Harder than winning a World Cup? At the time, as we serenaded the surprisingly large number of Ireland supporters in Wellington that night, anything seemed possible.”
How Brad Thorn left Johnny Sexton speechless
Sexton’s career found him coming up against many New Zealand players; both clashes against the All Blacks and in the European club rugby scene against sides featuring ex-pat Kiwi players.
In Obsessed, he reveals one of the most special moments of his career was when he spent a season playing alongside one of the toughest of the professional rugby era All Blacks; Brad Thorn.
Thorn – who played 59 times for the All Blacks, having earlier played test rugby league for the Kangaroos – spent part of the 2012 season with Irish club Leinster, who Sexton played for and at the time was coached by Schmidt.
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Sexton wrote while losing the 2012 Pro12 final to Welsh side Ospreys was a low, what followed in the dressing room after the match was a special moment in his career.
“The room was nearly empty when Brad sat down beside me, handed me a beer and thanked me for making him welcome at Leinster,” he wrote.
“And then he bowled me over.
“He said, ‘Don’t change mate. You’re a champion. Don’t change anything. Not for anyone’.
“I still consider it the biggest personal compliment that I’ve been paid from a fellow professional. Irish people generally aren’t good at giving or taking compliments. We’re quicker to criticise. Or if we give a compliment we do it indirectly.
“But this was unconditional praise. Given what he’d achieved in the game and everyone he’d played alongside, it meant the world to me.”
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Neil Reid is a Napier-based senior reporter who covers general news, features and sport. He joined the Herald in 2014 and has 30 years of newsroom experience.
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