GAME CHANGER
IRFU bare their teeth after shock Zebo exit Fears that others will follow star to France
IT was the Thursday before Ireland were ambushed by the Scots at the start of this year’s Six Nations that Joe Schmidt laid his cards on the table over the sticky issue of players attached to clubs overseas not getting a look-in at Test level.
That week, with Johnny Sexton decommissioned, the Ireland coach had gone with Ian Keatley as back-up to Paddy Jackson, the starting 10 in Edinburgh.
It was an odd selection, completely at odds with the notion of picking a team on form. Keatley was out of the Munster side and very much playing second fiddle to Kiwi Tyler Bleyendaal.
At the same time, Ian Madigan had just been back on the island, helping Bordeaux to a deserved European win over Jackson’s Ulster in Belfast.
However, the Dubliner’s effort didn’t get recognition in a time of Ireland need, Schmidt sticking to the IRFU party line that if you head abroad your Test hopes are dust.
‘We are incredibly keen to support the provinces,’ explained the coach who is contracted through to the 2019 World Cup, which means the line in the sand drawn for Irish players based abroad won’t shift any time soon.
‘If we tell players we’re picking from overseas, players may be more likely to go overseas. They have player management here and know they will be close to the queue in terms of selection.
‘You want every Irish player on the island and available, but it’s fluctuating regarding the players who are overseas in terms of when they can be available to us and that is frustrating.’
Schmidt’s stance is the legacy of his frustrations dealing with Racing during Sexton’s twoseason stint in Paris.
Unlike predecessors Eddie O’Sullivan and Declan Kidney who accommodated Geordan Murphy’s career-long Leicester affiliation (he won all 74 of his Ireland caps while based in England), Schmidt couldn’t get his head around not having an important player available for every Ireland training session.
For instance, instead of Sexton being fully available for the two-week lead-in to the start of the 2014 November series, he had to return to Paris in the middle of the first week as Racing wanted him for their weekend Top 14 match.
This toing and froing never sat well with the Ireland coach. The additional travelling didn’t do Sexton any great harm, mind. Ireland won the Six Nations in both those years he was financially filling his boots in Paris and commuting over.
But Schmidt never forgot his hassle with French club officialdom and, as soon as Sexton was re-signed by the IRFU, the door was bolted shut on the Test selection of players not playing for a province.
There is an upside to players leaving. Only for Marty Moore quitting Leinster, Tadhg Furlong might not have emerged as quickly. Ditto Joey Carbery after Madigan’s exit at the same province.
There is a downside, though, and the current financial climate is particularly hurting Munster as they have lost a succession of star names. Only for injury ending his career, Paul O’Connell would have had a two-year swansong at Toulon following the 2015 World Cup.
Then came Donnacha Ryan’s departure last summer, the lock not offered a central contract renewal by the IRFU and taking up an offer from Racing. Now there is Zebo’s imminent exit to France at the end of this season, four clubs said to be in the hunt after the news that Racing had captured his signature was dismissed yesterday as ‘premature’ by Ronan O’Gara.
Money is the sticking point. Just 13 central contracts exist at the IRFU, quite a drop-off to the near-30 figure of a decade ago. Eight are signed until the end of the next World Cup, a half-dozen Leinster players — Jamie Heaslip, Devin Toner, Cian Healy, Robbie Henshaw, Sean O’Brien and Sexton — along with Munster duo Keith Earls and Conor Murray. And the other five deals run out next June, those for Rob Kearney, Peter O’Mahony and ageing Ulster trio Rory Best, Jared Payne and Tommy Bowe. With Bowe’s cache in decline, there might have been an opportunity for Zebo to take up that slot, but this wasn’t apparently on the negotiating table. It has resulted in the parting of the ways and the IRFU baring its teeth before Zebo has even packed his bags — the 27-year-old, who has won 29 of his 35 caps under Schmidt, axed from the Ireland squad just three days after confirming his French leave.
Being immediately shunted out as soon as you sign elsewhere is a newly draconian development, though. Contrast how an injury-hit Ireland took Madigan to South Africa in June 2016 in the final month of his Leinster deal with how Zebo has been jettisoned even though his Munster tie-up still has eight months to run.
A fresh intolerance for those who dare break bread with overseas raiders was first signalled last June when Tadhg McElroy was thrown out of the Ireland Under 20s World Cup squad for taking up a development offer at Saracens rather than embark on Leinster’s academy pathway.
Now Zebo has jumped and its ramifications are intriguing. There are 55 Irishmen currently earning a rugby wage elsewhere in Europe.
It’s a list of all sorts, from 10 players capped by Ireland to AJ MacGinty and Shane O’Leary, a duo dumped from Connacht as they became USA and Canada internationals, and then onto a wild scattering of young things who refuse to give up on the dream of playing professionally having not made it at the provinces.
With an Ireland regular of Zebo’s calibre now set to join these exiles with his very heavy pockets, it could be the gamechanger that will see other stars follow and eventually force the IRFU into a U-turn on their strict Irish-based only national team selection.
As Zebo’s friend Murray pondered the other day, this move is ‘definitely going to turn heads’. How many will be the IRFU’s grave fear.