Frustrated.

Ireland outhalf Johnny Sexton has admitted he was incredibly frustrated with Ireland’s performance against Italy on Saturday, despite the fact that they got the bonus-point win they needed.

Joe Schmidt’s men scored four tries in Rome but were nowhere near their best, with a lot of individual errors. Sexton was replaced late in the game for debutant Jack Carty and was visibly annoyed coming off, cursing one of his teammates before kicking a sign.

Sexton says no one cares more than the players and has apologised for letting his “frustrations boil over.”

“How can you not be when you are doing as good a preparation as you did last year, you’re training as well as you did last year, you’re doing everything right and things just aren’t clicking,” Sexton told Virgin Media

“No one cares more than us. That’s the bottom line.”

“I’m sorry if I let my frustrations boil over at times but that’s part of me and I care a lot about the team. You don’t always get things right but that’s part of the job, when you care about it, things can boil over.”

Sexton says the difference between “playing good and having that bad game” are so marginal and points to Wales not saving their best game until the win over England.

“I could come out with three or four reasons but they will seem like excuses, so there’s no point in coming out.”

“We’ve shown glimpses in games of how good we can be. A good example would be Wales, poor in their first two games and then exploded in their last games against England. The difference between playing good and having that bad game are so small.”

“We said it when we were winning and you guys just think we’re throwing out the punch lines, the ‘margins’ and all that. But it’s not. They’re generally true and it’s something that we believed in.”

“We had a little bit of luck along the way last year to achieve the Grand Slam. Probably didn’t get the bounce of those balls against England and now we’re trying to find that sort of performance that we need to revive us again and get us going.”