Sexton was speaking to the media on Monday as part of the British and Irish Lions game against Argentina this Friday, and gave a mischievous answer to being asked for his opinions on Ioane\u2019s future move to Dublin.<\/p>\n
“Wow, save the best [question] for last,” he laughed.<\/p>\n
“I purchased my Munster season ticket last week, put it that way.”<\/p>\n
A short, tongue-in-cheek reply, but one that said a lot in very few words.<\/p>\n
The 39-year-old was in relaxed form as he spoke to the media at UCD, where the Lions squad are based this week ahead of their warm-up game against Los Pumas on Friday.<\/p>\n
A smaller squad of 24 trained in Portugal last week, with the Leinster, Bath and Leicester Tigers contingent linking up with the squad tonight following their URC and Premiership final exploits on Saturday.<\/p>\n
![\"16](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/0022bb5c-614.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n
For Sexton (above), many of this Lions squad are former team-mates and opponents, and he says he\u2019s wary of the fact he\u2019s on this tour as a coach rather than a player, as he was in 2013 and 2017.<\/p>\n
“Obviously I know these guys really well but, with that, comes a challenge in how you deal with them, particularly when they\u2019re friends.<\/p>\n
“And it\u2019s the same thing when you\u2019re meeting people for the first time, there\u2019s pros and cons with that. You have to try to get to know them as people, get to know their strengths and weaknesses.<\/p>\n
“Sometimes you can have a perception of a player from what you see through a TV screen and no matter how much footage you can watch and then you can see something different live.<\/p>\n
“You can see a different person to what you expected. I\u2019m enjoying being back, that\u2019s the main thing. Hopefully I can add value because that\u2019s ultimately what you want when you come into a job. You want to feel like you\u2019re making a difference and I want the players to say ‘he\u2019s been good for me\u2019.<\/p>\n
“I want to impart some of the knowledge that I\u2019ve picked up over 17 years as a pro, to give it back.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Johnny Sexton has fanned the flames of his feud with New Zealand’s Rieko Ioane, suggesting he\u2019ll be supporting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":190070,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4102],"tags":[4151,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-190069","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\/114695374455212441","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190069","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=190069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190069\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}