Ahead of the meeting between Racing and La Rochelle, Simon Zebo reflects on his relationship with Ronan O’Gara
From Pres to Paris and beyond, Simon Zebo and Ronan O’Gara meet again
SOMETIMES the wisest of men can learn from the daring of youth. Ronan O’Gara was 13 years and nine days older than Simon Zebo when they first shared a professional dressing-room. O’Gara would have been expected to fulfil the role of sage tutor, instructing this new kid on the block in the ways and wiles of a brutish, brutal life.
He did all of this, and more; yet O’Gara soon realised that the kid would ultimately teach him as much about himself as he would about the kid.
The younger man had known everything there was to know about the legendary out-half.
“He was always a hero to me,” says the 30-year-old former Irish international.
The older man thought he knew everything about the cocky, confident young winger.
Only one of them was right.
For there were times when O’Gara would spy Zebo in the gym, hopping and rapping to beat the band, and wonder what his own early career might have been like had he been able to sup from the cup of such blissful freedom.
There has been much success in his life to have harboured regrets, but still he has often mused about the tight, nagging grip that fraught fear would tug at his sleeve in his early days, in contrast to the boundless enthusiasm of Zebo and the new likely lads.
“Jesus,” he thought to himself in 2013, as his days were nearing an end while others were only beginning, “Would I have been a better player if I’d had that starting off?”
But he couldn’t change who he was; no more than Zebo could alter the fabric of his character.
The beauty was that each man could seek to borrow the best of the other.
“I remember the first time I was being called up to the Irish squad,” recalled Zebo this week. “ROG kinda just pulled me aside and let me know before I got the official word.”
There was a sense that the older man was advising the younger not to make the same mistakes that he had. But he made sure to distil his words into a positive message.
“You have to believe you’re as good as any of them up there! You have to believe you’re better than any of them up there!”
And so, when Zebo walked into his first Irish team meeting, he did so feeling 10 feet tall, unburdened by any of the inhibitions that had dogged O’Gara when he had made the same journey all those years earlier.
Zebo’s first season in green was O’Gara’s last and the path they once shared soon splintered as they bade farewell to home.
O’Gara went off to conquer the world; Zebo followed him to Paris in 2017 only to find that, before he arrived, O’Gara had already packed his bags again for New Zealand.
“I was bulling when he did that!” smiles Zebo.
It is 2021 now, a year of living dangerously as everyone tries to stay safe, and the pair are on opposing sides.
Two Paddys in French exile for the titanic clash between Zebo’s capital-based Racing 92, who are third in the Top 14, and league leaders La Rochelle, from the Bay of Biscay, the latest stop on head coach O’Gara’s globe-trotting coaching odyssey.
Originally fixed for this afternoon, the game has been pushed back a day due to Covid concerns in the La Rochelle camp.
Despite the swirl of unease, both men are feeling good and enjoying life.
O’Gara this week received his final coaching qualifications in a week when his old mucker, Paul O’Connell, joined the coaching staff of the Irish international side.
That might have stemmed talk of O’Connell linking up with O’Gara at Munster down the road; but as Zebo and O’Gara catch up on the PRO14 action, there could still be a reunion of sorts should the pair eventually return home.
“You never know!” Zebo chuckles cheekily.
Contract talks will begin soon but these days quality of life matters more than quantity of euro to the professional rugby player.
Traipsing
He and Elvira have three kids now and, instead of traipsing across town, skirting the Eiffel Tower en route to school for their eldest, they now only have to go around the block.
Jacob and Sofia are now at an all-French school. Perhaps they will stay here for good? There is little need to tempt fate while life is already so uncertain.
After breaking his feet three times in one year, he has been able to absorb the pandemic panic with a little more sanguinity than many.
“I was told to get myself fit,” he says, hopeful of making the bench at least tomorrow after another set-back for his stubborn foot.
“I need to prove my foot isn’t a burden and then after the next block of European matches we’ll have a look.
“My attitude is that every player should be grateful to have a job let alone be worried about signing a contract. Players were once holding the power but that won’t be the case for a while.”
It remains to be seen what that means for his future; just as he honestly made no secret of his desire to leave Munster and play in France, he has also readily admitted he wants to return at some stage.
The entire Zebo clan were back in Cork at Christmas – and underwent every protocol which made them think it might be another year before they embark on a similar trip again.
He never misses the chance to show his kids Pres, home to the younger Zebo and, before him, the younger O’Gara too.
Can it really be 20 years or more since those carefree days?
“I’ll tell you the truth, you’d be coming out of school or whatever and if anyone saw O’Gara driving down the road, we’d all be chasing after him like mad fellahs!
“He always had the star quality. People would just do double takes when they saw him in the street, people started whispering around him.
“And I definitely wanted any sprinkles of that stardust if it were left over. I wanted to be iconic like him. I wanted to leave a mark like him.”
When he did get the chance, Zebo’s exuberant style was misinterpreted as militating against an absence of substance.
The ‘old guard’ would instil in him the messages of rigour and routine; but they were careful not to strip the individualism from an emerging superstar.
“Ah, I’d drive them all mad,” he laughs now. “It took them a bit of time to get me.
“Who’s this langer coming in singing and dancing, doing one or two lifts, then a dance and a smile?
“But that was my happy-go-lucky nature. To those boys, so used to doing work intensely and going home, I felt different. But I wasn’t. I just did things differently.
“And all that mattered was whether or not you delivered on the pitch. That should be all that ever matters.
“We always had a good relationship. He put the arm around me when I was 18 or 19, just giving me little nuggets of life and rugby advice.
“We always shared the odd joke, I mean we really always felt we had a special relationship because we were the two Cork boys.”
They enjoyed a telepathic relationship on the field, too; with either man able to divine the other’s intentions with just a nod of the head, or even the shape of the out-half ’s kicking boot.
The end came inevitably for O’Gara as age withered him; for Zebo the end was intuitive as he sought a fresh pasture.
“I’d had dinner with him ages before I left Munster, in Paris ironically, and I told him of my desire to play in France some day,” recalls Zebo.
By 2017 he had made his decision, but Racing, who then employed O’Gara as an assistant coach, were one of several options for the in-demand Irish international.
When Zebo asked O’Gara for his counsel, the latter bequeathed it without favour.
“He didn’t want me to leave Munster at the same time, but to be fair to him he answered everything.
“He didn’t push me in the one direction or another. He wanted to leave it up to me, giving me all the right information to make the choice.
“For me, I knew that if he had made the choice to go somewhere, then 100pc if it’s good enough for him, it is good enough for me.
“Having played with me at Munster, he knew how to get the best out of me, he knew what made me tick, when to say things and how to say them.
“That was a big part of the decision, to be coached by him, knowing he could get the best out of me.
“Some coaches have great knowledge but can’t coach people. That’s what makes him so good.”
And so Zebo signed on in late 2017 for the 2018/’19 season. A few weeks later, O’Gara announced that he would be quitting to join Crusaders.
“I could have murdered him!” Zebo laughs.
“Ah, I was a bit annoyed we wouldn’t get to link up together.”
They have each flourished apart; both have won titles and tomorrow they will be plotting the downfall of each other.
Afterwards, two old friends will exchange socially-distanced greetings, perhaps even clink a can of beer as is the tradition.
It remains a curiosity that, although both men have left their country, Zebo, by being barred from playing for it, seems disproportionately punished.
But that is an old story. Maybe one day a new chapter may beckon.
“Time is ticking on that one,” says Zebo.
‘He always had the star quality . . . I wanted to be iconic like him. I wanted to leave a mark like him’