Ireland’s Bundee Aki will miss the rest of the World Cup after receiving a three-match ban for his red card against Samoa.

Aki was sent off in the 47-5 Pool A victory in Fukuoka on Saturday for a high tackle on UJ Seuteni but contested the decision in Tokyo on Monday in an attempt to be available for the quarter‑final against New Zealand on Saturday.

The 29-year-old centre failed, however, and the three-week ban would rule him out up until the final should Ireland make it that far.

“Having considered all the angles of the incident, together with evidence from the player and his representatives, the committee upheld the decision of the referee,” a World Rugby statement read.

Johnny Sexton, meanwhile, had earlier questioned the “strange” negativity around Ireland’s Rugby World Cup campaign, insisting Joe Schmidt’s men are ready to peak for their quarter-final against the All Blacks.

Sexton insisted Ireland knew Japan’s quality before their 19-12 Pool A defeat against the tournament hosts, and the fly-half has called on his side to produce one of their best performances against the All Blacks.

“We’ve been building pretty well apart from that poor 60 minutes against Japan – everything else has pretty much gone to plan,” Sexton said. “There’s been some negativity around us and we’d feel that’s been pretty strange. But we’re really confident in how we’re building. We’d like to be playing a bit better in some regards at times, but hopefully we can put that performance out there on Saturday.

“We’re very self-critical in terms of our performances and obviously after the Japan game we would have liked to have done things differently. But we knew how good a team Japan were, so we always knew that would happen if we didn’t play well, and it did happen.”

Japan beat Scotland 28-21 on Sunday to tee up a quarter-final clash with South Africa, handing Ireland a last-eight battle with the back-to-back world champions New Zealand in Tokyo on Saturday.

Sexton said that against Scotland “Japan were excellent again – they have been through the whole tournament”. The Ireland fly-half said of the hosts: “They were clinical with the ball, every time Scotland gave them the ball they seemed to hold it for 20 or 30 phases. It was pretty impressive, so I’m sure they will go on and really worry South Africa.”

Ireland’s failure to proceed past a World Cup quarter-final has become a millstone around the team’s neck. Now Schmidt has the chance for another history-making achievement, should he guide Ireland past his homeland’s team and into a maiden World Cup semi-final.

Ireland lost 22-10 against Wales in the 2011 quarter-finals, and Schmidt’s injury-ravaged men were thumped 43-20 by Argentina in Cardiff four years ago.

Sexton hopes Ireland’s defeat against Japan will prove their main aberration for this competition, especially as Schmidt’s side this time approach the knockout phases with a clean bill of health.

. But beyond that Beyond Aki’s departure, Ireland have everyone battling for selection, leaving Sexton hopeful of yet more history this weekend.

“I’m hoping that having lost a pool game that we’ve got that quarter-final performance out of our system that we’ve had in other tournaments,” Sexton said. “The way we played against Japan was probably very similar to the way we played against Wales and Argentina in the last two tournaments.

“The difference now is we’re not favourites going into this quarter-final whereas we were in the last two. So we’re building nicely, we haven’t hit our best performance yet and we need to get close to that to get the right result on Saturday.