Ireland fly-half Johnny Sexton insists that his team must win the Rugby World Cup if they are to be truly regarded as the best team on the planet.
Speaking ahead of the mouth-watering clash with the Springboks at the Aviva Stadium on Saturday, many regard this as the tastiest clash of the weekend.
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Ireland are currently sitting atop the World Rugby rankings and following a July series win over New Zealand, they go into November full of confidence.
But being world number one isn’t something that enters Sexton‘s head and he admits that winning the World Cup is the sole long-term focus of the team.
We need to win the World Cup
“Honestly, it’s not something that we really talk about much,” he explained. “It is not a goal to become number one in the world. That might sound stupid.
“In some sports it is – golf, tennis – but in rugby the rankings matter once and it’s three years out from the World Cup (when the World Cup draw is made), which doesn’t make that much sense either.
“We don’t speak about being number one. To be number one in the world, you need to win the World Cup, that’s where the goals are.
“Obviously you want to be the best in Europe, you want to win the Six Nations, those are our goals; it’s nothing to do with being number one and I don’t think many teams read too much into it.
“I know the other teams will probably refer to us now trying to put pressure on it but we don’t speak about it.”
After facing the Springboks, Ireland will then turn their attention to Fiji before taking on Australia. But veteran Sexton isn’t looking past this opening Test.
“We have to give them the respect that they absolutely deserve,” the veteran said, with the Springboks having named an exciting starting XV for Dublin.
“They’re the best team in the world in terms of they’re world champions. They’re a top-class team.
Boks a huge test for Ireland
“They’ve obviously won the World Cup, they beat the (British and Irish) Lions (in 2021) and had some big results over the last few years, so in terms of testing ourselves it’s huge.
“We need to bring our game and make sure we do it even better because when you have a couple of results like we did in the summer teams start to properly look at you and they go, ‘how are we going to mess up this Ireland team? How are we going to combat this?’.
“We’ve got to do it better and we’ve got to evolve a little bit and make sure we bring something new to the table.”
Ireland have not faced the Springboks since 2017 which adds to the spectacle as the world champions will be relishing taking on today’s so-called best team.
“If we got a win on Saturday it would be great; if we don’t then we learn from it,” Sexton continued ahead of the clash. “We’re going to learn both ways.
“We’re going to see what it’s like to play against this type of team, we haven’t played against them in a few years and I think it’s what we need.”