{"id":16955,"date":"2025-07-18T04:39:52","date_gmt":"2025-07-18T08:39:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/sin-categoria\/lions-vs-australia-sexton-demands-excellence-to-beat-the-wallabies\/"},"modified":"2025-07-18T04:39:52","modified_gmt":"2025-07-18T08:39:52","slug":"lions-vs-australia-sexton-demands-excellence-to-beat-the-wallabies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/rugby\/lions-vs-australia-sexton-demands-excellence-to-beat-the-wallabies\/","title":{"rendered":"Lions vs Australia: Sexton demands excellence to beat the Wallabies"},"content":{"rendered":"The British and Irish Lions&#8217; technical assistant, Johnny Sexton, anticipates a first Test on Saturday defined by very tight margins. Sexton believes the tourists will need an exceptional performance, not just a good one, to overcome Australia.\n\nThe former Ireland fly-half, who earned his first of six Lions call-ups in the opening match of the 2013 tour of Australia at Suncorp Stadium, dismissed expectations that Andy Farrell&#8217;s team will be the clear favorite for the match.\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>We don&#8217;t pay too much attention to the bookmakers&#8217; odds or what people say. We&#8217;re just focusing on tomorrow and trying to deliver a great performance.<\/p><cite>Johnny Sexton<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/a3.espncdn.com\/combiner\/i?img=%2Fphoto%2F2025%2F0718%2Fr1520532_1296x729_16%2D9.jpg\" alt=\"Johnny Sexton\" title=\"\"><figcaption>Johnny Sexton (derecha) fue nombrado asistente t\u00e9cnico de los Lions para su gira de pruebas en Australia. David Rogers\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n&#8220;Because that&#8217;s what will be needed, a great performance, not a good performance, to beat this Australian team,&#8221; added Sexton.\n\n&#8220;They are a proud nation, they are a first-class team, well-trained. And we need to bring out our best version of ourselves tomorrow,&#8221; Sexton continued.\n\nThe Lions won the 2013 series 2-1, but only managed a victorious start in Brisbane after Australia&#8217;s Kurtley Beale slipped while attempting a late penalty kick that would have given the Wallabies the win.\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><a href=\"\/rugby\/story?_slug_=british-irish-lions-vs-australia-andy-farrell-denies-overconfidence&amp;id=45759768\">British and Irish Lions vs. Australia: Andy Farrell denies &#8216;overconfidence&#8217;<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"\/rugby\/story?_slug_=british-irish-lions-first-test-vs-australia-where-watch-kick&amp;id=45750594\">British and Irish Lions&#8217; first Test against Australia: Where to watch, kick-off time<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"\/rugby\/story?_slug_=british-irish-lions-wallop-wallabies-five-reason-why-win-one-why-not&amp;id=45766876\">Five reasons why the Lions should beat the Wallabies, and one why they might not<\/a><\/li><\/ul>\n\nSexton, recalling his Lions debut, commented: &#8220;I think the occasion, the atmosphere, the crowds, that&#8217;s what always stays with you.&#8221;\n\n&#8220;Obviously, when Kurtley slipped and missed the kick, the euphoria we felt. But then again, it just shows the margins of professional sport and high-level sport like the one we are going to witness tomorrow.&#8221;\n\n&#8220;Everything will come down to something small like that, and hopefully we&#8217;ll be on the right side.&#8221;\n\nSexton, who played all three Tests in 2013 and in the drawn series in New Zealand four years later, said the Lions expected Australia to come out strong on Saturday.\n\n&#8220;They&#8217;ve been at the camp for the last few weeks preparing for us, and they had a match against Fiji a couple of weeks ago from which they will have learned a lot.&#8221;\n\n&#8220;You can talk about all the different &#8216;ifs&#8217; and &#8216;buts&#8217; and permutations, but ultimately, once you get on the field tomorrow, nobody remembers it, and we just move on with the game.&#8221;","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The British and Irish Lions&#8217; technical assistant, Johnny Sexton, anticipates a first Test on Saturday defined by very tight margins. Sexton believes the tourists will need an exceptional performance, not just a good one, to overcome Australia. The former Ireland fly-half, who earned his first of six Lions call-ups in the opening match of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16956,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[428,886,4483,203],"class_list":{"0":"post-16955","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-british-and-irish-lions","10":"tag-johnny-sexton","11":"tag-rugby"},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16955\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}