{"id":303754,"date":"2026-02-18T05:43:17","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T05:43:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/303754\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T05:43:17","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T05:43:17","slug":"johnny-sexton-confident-prendergast-and-crowley-will-hit-their-best-form-in-remaining-six-nations-games-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/303754\/","title":{"rendered":"Johnny Sexton confident Prendergast and Crowley will \u2018hit their best form\u2019 in remaining Six Nations games \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former Ireland<\/a> captain Johnny Sexton<\/a> is confident current outhalves Sam Prendergast<\/a> and Jack Crowley<\/a> will hit their best form in the coming matches. <\/p>\n

Now part of Ireland\u2019s coaching set-up, Sexton added it is vital that Ciar\u00e1n Frawley<\/a> and Harry Byrne should also be given opportunities to develop in the 10 position. <\/p>\n

\u201c(Prendergast and Crowley) both trained really well today,\u201d said Sexton. \u201cIt\u2019s important, not only those two, but Harry Byrne and Ciar\u00e1n Frawley too, that they keep developing and getting game-time. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere are four guys, and all the criticism from previous cycles is that we didn\u2019t develop guys, that we have relied too heavily on one (player) in some positions. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re doing it a different way now and whether that\u2019s right or wrong, everyone judges it by the outcome. But I know that in games to come, they\u2019re going to hit their best form and they\u2019ll be in a good place.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Did Ireland restore confidence ahead of Twickenham showdown?<\/p>\n

Sexton said the management team had not yet gone through the specific debriefing session following Ireland\u2019s 20-13 Six Nations win over Italy last weekend, a game in which 22-year-old Prendergast started ahead of Crowley, who came on in the second half.<\/p>\n

Head coach Andy Farrell<\/a> has spoken out against the damaging narrative on social media that has surrounded the two players since they were called up to the senior rankswith Ireland.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0\u2018Cop on\u2019: Andy Farrell hits out at \u2018keyboard warriors\u2019 over criticism of Prendergast and CrowleyOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wouldn\u2019t say too much straight after the game. We let things die down, then review it,\u201d said Sexton. \u201cWe review it together, very much. Those guys feed back to us as much as we feed back to them. <\/p>\n

\u201cUltimately, we want to know why. Why some things went well, what can we do differently in our prep. As coaches, what do we need to do more of? All those type of things.<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth of them did some really good things, some work-ons, and some things they need to improve. It\u2019ll be like that for the rest of their careers right until the last day. It\u2019s always like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sexton drew on his own almost 15-year experience as an international player to add that bad days can help bring players along just as much as good days.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven if I go back to some of my experiences, you come off the pitch and you think you\u2019ve had a great game, but you get into a Monday review and the coaches have a few other ideas in terms of how things have gone,\u201d said Sexton. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ll learn from it and keep developing, like they have been.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Ireland captain Johnny Sexton is confident current outhalves Sam Prendergast and Jack Crowley will hit their best…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":303755,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[59241,61,60,1449,15551,112],"class_list":["post-303754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-england-rugby","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-ireland-rugby","tag-six-nations","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303754\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}