Jonathan Sexton has allayed fears about his fitness and expects to be ready to face Saracens in the European Champions Cup at the Aviva Stadium on Sunday, 1 April.
The Ireland and Leinster out-half played in each one of Ireland’s Six Nations games this season on the way to a historic Grand Slam triumph, but injuries restricted his kicking off the tee.
Against Wales and England scrum-half Conor Murray slotted vital penalties to help seal a clean-sweep.
Sexton says that he will be fit for the European quarter-final and explained how Murray ended up kicking for Ireland.
"I should be good to go, yeah," he said, speaking to RTÉ Sport at a media conference to announce International Rugby Players’ (IRP) relocation to Dublin. IRP is the representative body of global rugby players.
"I’ve a bit of work to do this week to get right and hopefully I’ll be alright next week.
"It was the Wales game that I picked up a knock and that’s why Conor took the last kick in that game.
"In the game at the weekend against England I picked up a couple of bangs, but I kicked the rest of them and there was only one kick where I was struggling a little bit and he slotted it over. We’re very lucky that we have him."
Sexton says it wasn’t planned for his half-back partner to take over the kicking and explained that didn’t offer Murray any advice. He smiled: "I leave him off."
One of IRP’s key focuses is trying to manage the number of minutes that professional rugby players, particularly internationals, play and train.
Ireland’s players are managed by the IRFU so the amount of time they spend on the pitch is carefully monitored with the aim of maximising their performance with club and province.
This isn’t the cases in countries like England and France, where players are contracted to privately owned clubs and as a result often end up playing twice as many minutes as Ireland’s.
"The English boys, I think, had three weeks holidays and were straight in playing pre-season games; not great physical prep to turn around from a Lions tour"
Sexton would like to see this addressed so there is a level playing field, but admits that the IRFU’s policy helped secure just the country’s third Grand Slam.
"When we finished the Lions tour last summer we had roughly three weeks off, we had a six-week pre-season with a mini-break - three-week block, week off, three-week block - and then back into games," he said.
"The English boys, I think, had three weeks holidays and were straight in playing pre-season games; not great physical prep to turn around from a Lions tour.
"I have been on the other side of the fence before when I moved to France after the last Lions tour in 2013 where I had three weeks off, I think, and I played a pre-season friendly a week and-a-half, maybe two weeks later.
"It’s not ideal preparation and it’s a key reason why some of their players have been injured. It’s not the only reason, but it would play a big part in that and I think our freshness told in this campaign compared to other countries."
Sexton insists he wants to be part of head coach Joe Schmidt’s travelling party for the three-test tour of Australia this summer and says that the IRFU’s player management policy means he should be on the plane.
"We’re well looked after so the amount of minutes they want you to play in a season is calculated and, look, at times you’ll pick up a knock and you’ll miss a game here or there and you’ll pick that up at the other end of the season," he said.
"Our whole game minutes are planned so we can go to Australia, so we can play for Ireland in the summer tours and we’re still fit and ready to do it. I would like to go, yeah."
