Behind Simon Zebo's smile is a man of steel

There was a time when Simon Zebo saw the game in which he excels quite differently to the coaches whose job description it was to win matches and keep opponents at bay. By the Munster star’s own admission, getting stuck in at breakdowns interfered with the business of being brilliant and it was costing him Ireland caps.

While Zebo’s mercurial talents in the back three were considered indispensable in his province, the perception was they were a luxury Joe Schmidt would happily do without at Test level if the head coach had a full selection of back three options at his disposal.

Which means Zebo, first capped in 2012, saw no action during the 2014 Six Nations Championship-winning campaign and, having played in the first four matches of 2015, was replaced by Luke Fitzgerald for the decider in Scotland. There was vindication, of course, in the silverware that accrued in Zebo’s absence and, when the World Cup in England rolled around, the Munster man impressed at full-back against Romania and Italy but found himself overlooked once more in the games that mattered, against France and Argentina, when Rob Kearney regained fitness.