Scotland assistant coach Pete Horne says the key to minimising the threat posed by Ireland’s Johnny Sexton during Saturday’s do-or-die World Cup Pool B showdown in Paris is to not focus too much on the veteran playmaker.
“You’ve got to admire him,” said Horne, who celebrates his 34th birthday today, which makes him four years younger than Sexton. “What a character and what a competitor. It’s unbelievable what he’s doing at his age.
“He’ll be absolutely gunning for it and I’m sure it’ll mean a lot to him this weekend. He’s one of the best players in the world.
“But we don’t need to stress too much about what he’s going to do and start flying up at him because he’s such a good player that he can pick holes around you if you do that.
“We’ve got our defensive plans in place. We’re ready for the threats Ireland will pose. But, yeah, with Sexton, it’s awesome what he’s doing at his age.”
Horne added that while Scotland’s own talismanic stand-off, Finn Russell, is widely regarded as a very different sort of character and player to Sexton, the two playmakers actually have an awful lot in common.
“The obvious one is that, on the surface, Finn looks a lot more relaxed as a character, while Sexton is very organised, but like Sexton, Finn’s a really fierce competitor as well,” he explained.
“They both have unbelievable minds for the game. The way they see it, they’re just a step ahead of everyone else on the field.
“They’re not as dissimilar as how it maybe looks. It’ll be a great battle between two of the best players in the world on Saturday.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here