By Grainne McGuinness and Shaun Cronin
Winger Simon Zebo laughed off a suggestion that he was the player on the Irish team with the
and might need to be reined in by coach Joe Schmidt.“No no, not at all,” Zebo said, speaking at a press conference in Carton House this morning where he was named as part of the starting 15 for Ireland’s opening Six Nations fixture.
“I just go out and play every game as best I can and do whatever I can for the team - whether that’s a last-ditch tackle or a line-break, whatever. It doesn’t matter.”
The Munster winger said this was the ethos throughout the team.
“Each player really wants to benefit the team and that’s the great thing about the side, everybody is really playing for each other,” he explained.
“If someone gets a little bit of limelight then we know someone else did a dirty job to make sure he did, so it’s great.”
“Everybody’s motoring well and everybody’s really excited so collectively hopefully we’ll put in a big performance.”
Zebo admits he would have liked to have played a bigger role in Ireland’s Six Nations victory last year if circumstances had been different.
“I was just back from injury,” he said.
“I would like to have thought if I’d had a fully fit season I’d have been in with a shot and would have liked to have seen where it went from there.”
He credits both his Ireland manager and also Munster coach Anthony Foley with helping him improve in the last 12 months.
“My game’s come on and working with Joe, and Axel down in Munster has helped.” Zebo said, and added that he hoped there was more to come.
“I’m 24 years of age and I’m going to keep improving for the next couple of years anyway. I think all the small aspects of my game have picked up - the finer details. And fingers crossed I’ll keep getting better.”
Zebo’s improvement was rewarded with starts in all three of Ireland’s matches in the November series. The Munster man credits Schmidt for helping him make those small, incremental improvements.
“Joe is a very, very detailed man,” he said. “He knows every small aspect of the game, it’s incredible really. He’s great to work with.”
Schmidt’s attention to detail extends to preparation for each game in its turn and Zebo is adamant there is no danger of the Irish squad taking victory in Italy for granted or being distracted by bigger matches ahead.
No, definitely not,” he responded to a question about looking ahead to the rest of the tournament and the World Cup later in the year.
“If you do that you get ahead of yourself - that’s where you slip up and come out the wrong end of results.
“We’re going to be focusing fully on Italy and everything after that will look after itself.”