‘It doesn’t need to be part of the game’ – Joe Schmidt hopes France will not target Johnny Sexton

Ireland head coach Joe Schmidt is hoping France will not target Johnny Sexton in their Six Nations opener on Saturday.

Sexton has been targeted by French opposition in 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017 but Schmidt is hoping that his star fly-half will not be singled out by France under new coach Jacques Brunel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlnPgf5fu3Q

"I hope not," Schmidt replied when asked if he expected Sexton to be the victim of some extra attention on Saturday. "Johnny is a very tough competitor. He will take whatever is doled out, but when it comes to off the ball, I don't think it needs to be apart of the game. "It hasn't been apart of the game in the teams that I've seen Jacques coach in the past so I would hope that it's not [on Saturday]."

Schmidt added that he was hopeful that referee Nigel Owens would be able to ensure that any off the ball attention is stamped out of the game given his experience, but that he has a duty to try and protect all players.

"I think the officials are trying really hard to protect all 30 people on the pitch and Johnny is one of those 30 people," added Schmidt. "I think it has been ramped up since we were involved two years ago, obviously it's not the same referee [Wayne Barnes] this time, and we hope that with the experience of the referee we have got [Nigel Owens] that it won't even enter into the fray. That would be our hope."

France have fielded an inexperienced side with 19-year-old fly-half Matthieu Jalibert and full-back Geoffrey Palis both set to make their international debuts, while one-cap lock Arthur Iturria will partner his Clermont teammate Sébastien Vahaamahina in the second row. https://twitter.com/FFRugby/status/958976988672176128 Schmidt said that France's inexperience has allowed him and his side to place more focus on their gameplan while he did note that Ireland need to start strong given their opening round to Scotland last year.

"A lot has been mentioned about that Scotland game last year but I think one of the things is to put that game in context," added Schmidt. "They were a very good side. You don't have to be far off the top margin of your performance to have a team put some points on you very, very quickly. "We know we have to be dialed in from the start and we weren't as dialed in as we were this time last year so that's a little bit of a warning for us. "We've worked hard to focus on ourselves and try and do what we can, and in terms of what they deliver, we know they're going to be physical, we know they have some fantastic athletes, but apart from that, we're pretty sure that we'll carry hard, they'll tackle hard and they'll be organised because Jacques gets people organised pretty quickly."