How Ronan O’Gara jibe fuelled Johnny Sexton’s drive to succeed

The Leinster and Ireland star retired following last October’s World Cup having surpassed O’Gara, eight years his senior, as the leading Irish points scorer. In the extracts he describes the origins of the animosity between the pair in April 2009 and the start of a rivalry which fascinated rugby supporters following Sexton’s arrival on the scene with his province and his move into the Test number 10 jersey at the Munster man’s expense.

Recalling his introduction off the bench for Leinster against Munster at Thomond Park, Sexton wrote after he accidently cut Lifeimi Mafi with a stud above his eye. That drew the attention of Paul O’Connell and Sexton wrote: ”With Paulie there for protection, O’Gara was also in my face: “What the f*** are you doing?” I responded by shaping to punch him, just drawing my fist back. When he winced, I called him a coward. That really set him off. 

“Call me a coward? You’re nothing! You’re useless! A nobody!” 

“It soon broke up, but I stored his words in a place where they could fester.” 

That season’s European Cup semi-final between the two provinces at Croke Park sparked the famous flashpoint between Sexton and O’Gara, following Gordon D’Arcy’s try for Leinster and his team-mate returning the verbal compliment from weeks before on the Munster 10.

“I’ve spent a lot of time apologising for that moment over the years… At this stage, I’m actually glad that I did it. I was just being me,” Sexton wrote.

“And was it really that bad? His words had played over and over in my head for weeks building up to this game. ‘You’re useless, a nobody.’ “I went over to O’Gara on the final whistle and offered my hand. He told me to f*** off. He had the hump, big-time. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that Brian (O’Driscoll) had intercepted him for our final try.” 

Intriguingly, Sexton explains how the original O’Gara insult helped improve his goal-kicking following a suggestion from kicking coach Dave Alred after an episode during the 2010 Six Nations. Substituted during a defeat to Scotland, Sexton still had to take a conversion having succeeded with only two of his previous four. This one went over for two points and he wrote: “It was an important kick for me. A turning point. And that’s because of a conversation I had with Dave Alred soon afterwards.

“Dave asked me how I’d felt standing over the kick. This was the first time I’d been asked a question like that by a coach. I told him that I’d felt angry — angry at being replaced, angry at the way it had been done, angry that every time I took a kick at goal, I had O’Gara glaring down at me from the big screen. Dave reckoned that the anger had worked for me. I’d put some of that anger into the kick and blasted it between the posts, rather than trying to hope the ball over, as I had been doing for a lot of kicks.

“So he came up with the idea of using O’Gara’s face to my advantage. Pick your target in the crowd and then transpose his face so that the target is right between his eyes. It was a brilliant bit of coaching — an example of taking negative energy and flipping it into a positive way of thinking. My place-kicking percentages improved gradually.

“They were only so-so against Connacht the following week. The week after that, we were in Limerick, of all places. I missed a couple but got the one that counted near the end, the one that ensured a one-point victory — Leinster’s first win in Limerick in 15 years.

“Little did Munster realise that I’d used their number 10’s mug as my motivation.”