Brave blessing?

Johnny Sexton missed out on Ireland’s clash with Japan yesterday through injury, and it must have been a tough watch for the World Player of the Year as the men in green fell to a shock defeat.

Sexton is expected to come straight back into the fold against Russia, and while they are no longer in control of their faith in terms of finishing top of the pool – Sexton isn’t worried.

Speaking to the media earlier today, the Ireland outhalf reckons the shock loss to Japan could act as a “blessing in disguise” of sorts.

“The only blessing in disguise is that in the last two World Cups I’ve been involved in, we’ve not cruised through the group, but we’ve had everything go our way in the pool stages.” Sexton said

“And then we’ve had the day we had yesterday in the quarter-final. And we’d be going home today.

“We’ve got the rest of the pool to get things together. So the great thing now is that we’ve got the rest of the pool to get things together.

“We know to a certain extent things are in our hands if we can win the last two games and score a number of tries that we can definitely qualify for the quarter-final.

“First or second place is out of our control, so we won’t worry about that.

“But it’s up to us now to put in two big performances and hopefully get ourselves into a quarter-final. And we know that if we can get there we’ve got a chance…

“A five-game winning run now would be great, that would do nicely.”

What do you think? Does Sexton have a point?