It is not just politeness that prevents the Irish from playing down their obvious superiority over Romania – ranked 17th in the world and worth it – at Wembley on Sunday afternoon. The team name that has seeped into conversations in the first week of the tournament, Japan, is enough to unsettle comfortable assumptions about who should be bowing down to whom and, although Romania are a rough and tumble outfit who gave France moments of flickering concern at the breakdown in midweek, Joe Schmidt is not one for assuming the sun will come up until it is blazing in his face.
Despite being hailed as the oldest Irish starting lineup in the 24-year-history of the tournament, his squad have no more of a baby-pink glow than do their gnarled opponents, who come with nothing to show for their contribution but a lot of hard-earned bruises.
Schmidt, as stats-savvy as any coach here, bore the look of a startled gazelle when his players’ long-toothedness was put to him at their posh training camp at St George’s Park in Burton-upon-Trent on Friday. “Well, we’re the oldest and they’ve got 728 caps,” he said, “so let’s throw away the Zimmer frames.”
Like most maths myths, it is a tough one to pin down but, by the estimates of the travelling Irish media, the team’s average age is 28.9, contrary to calculations of 29 and 245 days on the official Rugby World Cup website, which has Romania 102 days older and Tonga, the alleged leading greybeards, at 29.4. What is not disputed is that the scrum‑half, Eoin Reddan, is 55 days short of his 35th birthday.
Whatever the numbers crunched and the actualité embroidered, the discussion confirms that age is a shifting concept in the modern game. Paul O’Connell, going strong at 35, will be scratching around on the bench like some fevered colt today, according to Schmidt, so keen is the regular Ireland captain, to get his hands on the Romanians – or anyone, for that matter.
One who does get his opportunity from the starting whistle in a lineup showing 12 changes from the team that walloped Canada 50-7 is Simon Zebo, an athlete who seems forever young at 25, although he is a relative novice, still, at full-back. He is a mercurial talent, no doubt, and he has mischief in his smile.
Schmidt recognised his athletic gifts and the power of his personality from the start of his tenure, but reckons he is better suited to his needs at full-back rather than on the wing, where he has been intermittently brilliant and suspect. Whether Zebo agrees with the gaffer is difficult to tell, but is happy enough to go along with the plan. This seems to be a very happy Irish team.
How did he view Schmidt’s regime and strategy? “It’s hard to say,” Zebo says, shifting in his seat. “It’s just a different style of coach. Joe would coach totally different to Rob Penney or Anthony Foley coaching. Every coach is different. There are certain things I have to do to please one coach, and another thing to please another, so ... it’s been a relationship that I’ve had to get used to. I’m a better player for having worked under him.”
One aspect of Zebo’s play that needed work was cleaning out at rucks, an onerous task that comes the way of backs more closely involved in the heavy lifting upfront. “He’s so detailed in every little facet of the game,” Zebo says, “and that’s probably an area I didn’t think would have needed so much work in the past but obviously it does, especially at this standard of play. You need to not have any weaknesses if you want to be a successful international.”
Schmidt, a smart thinker, recognises the value of Zebo’s creativity as well. “Joe gives you the licence,” he says. “And if it’s not [working] and you do something he’ll let you know about it.”
The odds are that Zebo will not be drastically stretched against Romania who, for all the charitable words about their effort, have not beaten Ireland in eight attempts, shipping 346 points and posting 92. Surely, then, this is an opportunity to rack up plenty more. Zebo is not thinking along those lines. “We feel like we have to go out and win the game first,” he says. “They showed they can easily upset anybody that’s not on their game. They posed a lot of problems for France.
“France had a lot of turnovers in the first half and Romania probably could have had a few more scores in the first half.”
If he does get a burst of inspiration in what is expected to be a walkover, it might come from a recent meeting with Usain Bolt, who spent an evening with the team at their London hotel and struck Zebo, once an aspiring track star with a 100 metres best time of 11.1sec, as a locked-on legend. Zebo’s Martinique-born father, Arthur, was a good athlete, and his sister, Jessika, has represented Ireland as a hurdler. “It was like a dream come true. We have a big athletics background in our family and to be able to sit next to the greatest athlete that’s ever lived was amazing and just to get his insights into a few things around his training and his preparation for tournaments was something very special. I even got a FaceTime session with my sister back home, just so she could see him and drool over him even more.”
The odds are Irish fans will be doing the drooling on Sunday and, if Zebo gets an opening, he could be the player to raise the loudest cheers.
He has never been to Wembley, but his good friend David Meyler was there for Hull City when they lost in the FA Cup final to Arsenal in 2014, and scored in the 5-3 semi-final win over Sheffield United.
“He’s going to miss this game, but he’s coming to one or two later in the tournament. He didn’t win there in a final, so I’ll have to slag him about that.”
