Simon Zebo bid farewell to Thomond Park on Saturday night.
Regarding underappreciated sportspeople, Simon Zebo is one of the first names to come to mind.
When the Corkman made his Munster breakthrough in the early 2010s he sprinkled stardust into a team previously known for its pragmatic forward-dominant style of play.
His dazzling hat-trick away to Northampton Saints in the January of 2012 confirmed his star quality and a month later he had the world’s attention with a famous flick against Wales in the Six Nations.
If rugby has failed to win international audiences, one of the main reasons must be its reliance on systems and selfless collective effort over individual magic.
What many people want from sport is human expression; to watch creativity, intuition and innovation happen in real-time.
That’s what Zebo brought from his early years right to the very end.
As Munster’s all-time top try scorer, one of the most prolific wingers the game has ever seen and a British and Irish Lion, he can have few regrets.
Regrets should be reserved for the Irish national team.
Unfond of Zebo’s off-the-cuff ingenuity, Joe Schmidt’s favourites come Six Nations time were often Dave Kearney (19 caps), Andrew Trimble (70 caps) and Fergus McFadden (34 caps).
Players who successfully followed Schmidt’s gameplan to a tee to win a hoard of Six Nations medals but not the sort to take Ireland to the next level where they could shake off the tag as the Rugby World Cup’s greatest failures.
Mack Loving it.
Under Andy Farrell, the unpredictability of archetypal ‘free spirit’ Mack Hansen has given the team an exciting edge.
Hansen’s abilities are unrestricted and without the limitations of painstaking instructions, can get Ireland out of jail when the rest of the system is coming up short.
That kind of license was never granted to Zebo, despite being at least as talented as the Connacht maverick.
While Schmidt’s conservatism worked a treat for Ireland in the Six Nations, he may have shown a lack of ambition or belief in Ireland as a major rugby power by engaging in micro-management.
Sport is beginning to show us how the top teams with elite players are often better served by encouraging these players to perform with freedom, while lesser teams tend to need more structure to close the talent-gap between them and their rivals.
Carlo Ancelotti, the hands-off general of Real Madrid, said as much when discussing the freedom he encourages from his multi-Champions League-winning attackers.
“I do not do it (micro-management) because I do not want to take away everyone’s creativity,” said the Italian.
“The mistake that the new generation of coaches make is giving too much information to the players in the game with the ball. This takes away creativity.
“It is one thing to indicate to the player the positioning without the ball, there you have to give a lot of information, because without the ball it is concentration, sacrifice and collective play.
“But with the ball, it depends on the creativity of the player.”
“I certainly believe that the ceiling is really high with this kind of football because you do not limit them so much.”
That last sentence is particularly relevant. In some ways, Irish Rugby’s shortcomings over the last decade can be best understood through the lens of Simon Zebo’s 35-cap Ireland career.
As by selecting wingers “who do the basics well”, Schmidt set a lower ceiling than necessary on the Irish team for many years.
Although high enough to beat modest competition to Six Nations titles, they were always bound to hit their heads come the 2015 and 2019 quarter-finals where the attacking play was average at best.
Legend’s legacy
Despite a frustrating international career which saw Zebo feature at just one World Cup and subsequently end his Ireland days with a move to Racing 92 in 2017, he still managed to forge a remarkable career which sometimes deserves more recognition.
He retires with more European Cup tries than the great Brian O’Driscoll, third in the tournament’s all-time standings on 35 and only beaten by Chris Ashton and Vincent Clerc.
For Munster, he scored a record 73 tries in total, despite spending 2018 to 2021 with Racing where he scored another 25 times.
Most of all, however, he brought joy to every fan who watched him play.
He might have had natural ability, but something he definitely fought for was his right to express that ability in a sport that sometimes eats itself alive by making players machines.
Sportspeople are full human beings, brimming with imagination, ideas and instinct. That’s why people want to watch them.
Zebo didn’t always win his fight to play his way, but he never let it change him either.
And that’s worth more than all the caps it cost him.
