Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

recovery from injury.

To quote another part of the report, the factual findings section:

Incident 2 (the one with the young child - his son):

Incident 3:

Also note that the third incident was decided to not be misconduct. I'm surprised the second one (which was disputed and not accepted as misconduct by Sexton/Leinster) was too, but that's not up to me.

[edit - I have edited my post to be less confrontational]

Quote from the judgment:

"96. The evidence from Ireland’s Head Coach, which was not disputed by EPCR, is that JS “will be involved in the 3 warm up games that we have coming up”. Since JS has been “out of the game through injury since the 18th March 2023 we feel that this would be the minimum number of games that he will need to be match fit for the start of the Rugby World Cup”. 

97. He is fit to play. That was the evidence from Dr Ciaran Cosgrove, Ireland’steam doctor, again not disputed by EPCR. 

98. Therefore, we are satisfied that JS would, but for his suspension, be fit to play in and be selected for those matches."

So basically incident number two is,

Sexton said something near the officials, which they didn't hear, and no one else heard, they don't know what he said, but they are going to go ahead and assume it was about the officials and that it was bad.

That seems like very flimsy evidence

Kudos to the committee for working in the "won't someone please think of the children" angle. (seriously though, it's obvious they mention it just to be able to distinguish each event, they're not actually judging his parenting)

Read through the decision, it's pretty reasonable, but think there would have plenty of grounds to challenge had the sanction been more severe. If Sexton had simply denied the charge, all the evidence would have been pretty circumstantial.

A good outcome for all sides IMO. Sexton gets a richly deserved ban, but not so severe that Ireland need to freak out about it.

I think a change in captaincy would probably be wise to be honest. Sexton would still be a hugely important leader within the group. But I think having someone else interacting with the referee would be a smart move. Referees are human and I don't think they will be 100% impartial with Sexton after this whole fiasco. If say we get Peyper for the quarter final, that could be a big problem for us.

Yes, it was player-led rather than Union-led, but the union agreed to it in their contracts.

The point being, they’re probably the 2 best players of their generation and they’ve both spoken about how beneficial missing Tests for a non-injury related reason in a RWC-cycle was beneficial for them. It’s not a totally alien concept.

Agreed.

His one man show against Northampton remains a truly phenomenal performance.

Plenty of salty Irish people too.

Loving it.