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"We had Joey up, ready to go" Joe Schmidt has revealed that Johnny Sexton was almost
substituted before scoring the match-winning drop goal against France.
With the last kick of the game, Sexton transformed what would have been a damaging
defeat for Ireland in Paris into a victory that keeps this year's title bid on track.
But the out-half went down with cramp with 10 minutes to go on Saturday.
Joey Carbery was about to replace Sexton until the 32-year-old indicated that he could
continue.
"We had Joey up, ready to go," said Schmidt.
Johnny Sexton celebrates kicking the winning drop goal (Image: ©INPHO/Billy Stickland)
"Joey steered the ship home in the past, maybe not on as big a stage as this but it was still
a fairly big stage for us.
"So it's one of those things where you say, 'Give us a moment' - and then the physio said,
'Johnny feels good, he feels he can continue', which is a relief for us."
Ireland will now look forward to three home ties in succession, starting with Italy at the Aviva
Stadium on Saturday, followed by Wales and Scotland.
"There's just massive relief because if you lose your first game, you're playing catch up the
whole way and it's so tough," Schmidt said.
"We've a little bit of security being at home. Getting through something like that, I think it
helps build the group together.
"It does strengthen the team bond and hopefully that'll give them the resolve and the
resilience that's required, because it's such a tough competition.
"We know we're going to be in similar situations. Maybe not right at the end of the game -
but similar situations that we're going to have to fight our way through."
But the head coach acknowledged that Ireland must improve on their performance in the 15-
13 victory if they're to be in with a shout for championship honours.
NatWest 6 Nations Championship Round 1, Stade de France, Paris, France 3/2/2018
France vs Ireland Ireland's Johnny Sexton kicks the winning drop goal Mandatory Credit
©INPHO/James Crombie "We'd certainly like to," Schmidt said.
"The surface was unbelievable, they've certainly improved the surface here, it was
magnificent.
"But sometimes when the surface is really good and the glass gets wet, it becomes a bit
slippy - kind of like icy.
"Conditions were not as we would've liked them but you're going to get that at times and so
you have to adapt and cope with that.
"And I felt we did in every way other than accumulating the points. The way that they got
back into the game meant it was us that was scrambling in the end."
Schmidt had put his faith in three 6 Nations debutants - James Ryan, Bundee Aki and Jacob
Stockdale and said his team selection was vindicated "by a whisker".
Paying tribute to his players, the Kiwi remarked: "It had ticked over the 80 minutes and the
game was all but dead and buried, and so I felt it was unbelievably accurate, hard working
and skilful to achieve what they did.
Johnny Sexton celebrates kicking the winning drop goal (Image: ©INPHO/Dan Sheridan)
"To work from a drop-out 22, where you're about 16 metres out from your own line, for Iain
Henderson to take that and for us to build the phases from there, to have the audacity to
have a cross-kick involved and for Keith Earls to make no contest of it – he was going to
claim that no matter what – that showed clarity of thought.
"Then some of the appeals to the referee when guys were lying in the way, made it look to
me that it was going to be impossible.
"My thoughts were that we could not score with seven, eight, nine second rucks. We
couldn't score a try - but that didn't stop Johnny knocking over a drop goal.
"Four years ago when we won the 6 Nations title here, it was the other way round, where we
were hanging on for the win.