{"id":189217,"date":"2025-06-16T14:40:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-16T14:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/189217\/"},"modified":"2025-06-16T14:40:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-16T14:40:09","slug":"british-and-irish-lions-coach-johnny-sexton-not-surprised-by-record-ireland-contingent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/189217\/","title":{"rendered":"British and Irish Lions: Coach Johnny Sexton ‘not surprised’ by record Ireland contingent"},"content":{"rendered":"

Johnny Sexton says he was not surprised to see a record number of Ireland players selected in the British and Irish Lions squad, but accepts “everyone has their own opinion”. <\/b><\/p>\n

Lions head coach Andy Farrell, who has also been Ireland boss since 2019, picked 15 in his initial 38-man squad for the Australia tour<\/a> and last week called up Connacht prop Finlay Bealham following Zander Fagerson’s injury. <\/p>\n

When asked about the strong Ireland contingent – 12 Leinster players, three from Connacht and one from Munster – Sexton pointed to the national team’s form in recent years. <\/p>\n

“Well, Ireland have done pretty well over the last few years, having won the [Six Nations] championship last year, the Grand Slam the year before, so you’re probably looking over the last three years,” said the former Ireland captain, who is a kicking coach in Farrell’s Lions backroom team.<\/p>\n

“With some players, coaches would look at form over eight, nine years. It’s not just if you’ve played well in a couple of games in the Six Nations, you can’t force your way in, but sometimes you take a bigger picture look with players.<\/p>\n

“They know the way Andy coaches, they know the system. It didn’t surprise me because historically, let’s say when there was a Welsh coach and the Welsh team did well, there were the majority of the Welsh team. <\/p>\n

“I think the teams that performed the best in the Six Nations got selected.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Johnny Sexton says he was not surprised to see a record number of Ireland players selected in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189218,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4102],"tags":[4151,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-189217","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114693565592320247","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}