All a player wants is a chance to atone...
Tommy O’Donnell and Zebo make the trip to Edinburgh, but are not involved in the 23-man match-day squad. That’s hard for Zebo to swallow. With Jack McGrath and Cian Healy both certain to be involved anyway, Zebo’s exclusion sticks out like a sore thumb, not just from the XV but from the 23.
He’s been hard done by. Whatever way it’s dressed up, he’s the fall guy for the Welsh defeat and that’s hard to justify. He was one of the best three players in Ireland’s victory over England and it’s not that he was the standout poor performer in Cardiff either.
Being offered the consolation of a place in the 23 wouldn’t make much difference to a lad who is ultra-competitive and wants to start games. At times, a winger must rely on those inside, putting him into space. That’s not happening at the minute for Ireland. That’s okay, it’s not part of the strategic mindset, which is more about competing in the air and cleaning out rucks. But Ireland weren’t creative enough against Wales. He had to run into a lot of brick walls — otherwise we were into intercept territory.
Top players excel when deficiencies are pointed out and they’re given the opportunity to respond — not getting the chance to respond is the most hurtful thing for any player. When he reflects on this — and I know the position well — Zebo will know he’s the one player who doesn’t get the opportunity to put a poor team performance and an average individual performance to bed.
All you want as a player is to get the opportunity — then you can’t have any excuses. You live with it, accept it and move on. But for a team to underperform and be the one change in the squad, then that is going to sting, not matter how strong you are.
Zebo’s perceived weaknesses are physicality and contesting ball in the air, but he excelled in both areas against England. There are times he might need a shoe up the backside but that’s the idiosyncrasies of a squad full of differing personalities. Maybe away from home, when Wales got on top, he might have let his mental focus slip a little. But I hope this doesn’t reopen the whole debate about Zebo’s worth as an international winger. We put that discussion behind us eight games ago. Can anyone really say he’s under-performed in the last year? He has done very well.
My admiration for what Joe Schmidt has brought to Ireland is well advertised, but he must be scratching his head wondering how he can tweak things without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Four tries in four games is a very modest return, and the weather conditions have been largely benign. Hence my puzzlement at excluding one of the few finishers in the squad. Luke Fitzgerald can be electric too, but he hasn’t had a lot of rugby and on that basis, isn’t there an argument too for Keith Earls, who has never been in an Irish squad under Schmidt?
The key word now in the team room is response. Watch the senior guys tomorrow at Murrayfield — people like Rory Best have shown over a decade that, when they have a bad day, they don’t compound the error — they react. You’d be hoping the same goes for Johnny Sexton, Jamie Heaslip, Sean O’Brien and Rob Kearney. These are the people we look to provide the direction.
Wales were smart in their analysis, credit Gatland for that. His ability to bring his players to a pitch for a one-off occasion like last Saturday is unquestionable. The post-match reaction of Howley, Edwards and Warburton was not counterfeit and wouldn’t be so pronounced unless there were serious questions asked last week in the Welsh camp. I know for a fact that Gatland majored on the fact that Ireland were not used to chasing a game. The Welsh were directed to throw the kitchen sink at their visitors for 15 minutes and build a score. You don’t have to play too much if you are nine points up. Wales won the first four high balls. If it was the Ryder Cup, it’s one of the Europeans going four up after four in the singles.
There is a flipside, lost in the debris. Wales couldn’t put Ireland away and we had buckets of chances, but were inaccurate. Players have to accept that charge. There is always a plan going into a game, but the great players have the nous to think outside the box and change it when things aren’t going well. That’s a lot harder than you think, especially when you’ve 70,000 people screaming at you to go home.
Ireland fed the Wales defence instead of starving them and turning them a little more. We played into their blitz. If you play long, miss passes, they just come off the line and hammer you. It feeds the frenzy. Did Ireland feel — because they were getting media comment about kicking the ball too much — that the solution was to keep the ball in hand? The solution is to win your games, drive on and win a Grand Slam. Next.
Does the championship matter, in the broader context of a World Cup later in the year? It does, not least because it’s the last competitive 80 minutes Schmidt gets beforehand.
The most influential element of tomorrow’s Six Nations climax will be the weather conditions in Rome. If Wales get a sunny day and a dry ball, they can go do a job on Italy. Sergio Parisse out is like Paul O’Connell out — you don’t get the same glares and feedback under the posts when the opposition scores. It’s the hidden ingredients and general standards they bring to the group. A presence that sets them apart and always demands something better.
Gatland’s players are the ones tomorrow who really don’t have to worry about winning. Ireland cannot go to Murrayfield sure of coming out in top and, as bad as France are, they will still be up for Le Crunch. The result in the latter games is undecided but in Rome, Wales will know in the warm up they can focus on working the scoreboard, and not winning the game.
The autumn was so promising for Scotland, and even in this championship, they’ve shown how problematic they can be. They have to come out tomorrow like hungry dogs who haven’t been fed for a week. And that drags Ireland into the trenches, the sort of scrap Wales won’t have to concern themselves with in Rome.
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