{"id":667591,"date":"2026-10-28T07:28:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-28T07:28:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/667591\/"},"modified":"2026-10-28T07:28:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-28T07:28:12","slug":"weve-got-a-bit-of-work-to-do-nations-championship-a-test-for-irelands-world-cup-ambitions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/667591\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018We\u2019ve got a bit of work to do\u2019: Nations Championship a test for Ireland\u2019s World Cup ambitions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As a player, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/johnny-sexton\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/johnny-sexton\/\">Johnny Sexton<\/a> experienced going into <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/rugby-world-cup\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/rugby-world-cup\/\">World Cup<\/a>s both with and without high expectations. Although the outcome was the same dog-eared script of a quarter-final exit, he has little doubt that going with hope if preferable.<\/p>\n<p>So while the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/nations-championship\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/nations-championship\/\">Nations Championship<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/six-nations\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/six-nations\/\">Six Nations<\/a> are desirable targets in their own right, they also serve as a lead-in to the next year\u2019s World Cup Australia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As a player, Johnny Sexton experienced going into World Cups both with and without high expectations. Although the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":667592,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-667591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667591","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=667591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667591\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/667592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=667591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=667591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=667591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}