Munster Team Talk Thread - New season title pending....

Zebo's Munster career was certainly better than Madigan's Leinster career (not counting silverware obviously) and his move to Racing was of greater fanfare than Madigan's trip to Bordeaux.

But you are really downplaying Madigan here (intentionally) to try and make a point I'm not arguing against. Firstly, Madigan played 22 times for Bordeaux starting 12 of those games (over half). He then got offered a three year deal by Bristol and was top points scorer in the Championship before they were promoted. Bristol went on a spending spree under new owners and I would imagine Madigan was well rewarded for the risk he took. Referencing Madigan's career decline without similarly referencing Zebo's is also a little bit telling, in 20/21 both had similar starts / benches for Ulster and Racing respectively as Zebo struggled to get game time in a depleted setup (in particular at the business end of the season where he only benched or wasn't picked).

Either way, as I said at the outset I'm not debating this point - we're not discussing their club careers (which are much more comparable than you've tried to make out), we're discussing their impact for Ireland / resilience within the setup and nothing you have written applies to that. Similarly, being top try scorer at Munster is a good indictment of his injury record and ability to finish, but could also be contextualised by Munster failing to produce back 3 talent and Zebo's inability to get regular international call ups.

As for Hanrahan, he had a terrific underage international career but no senior career bar a few emerging Ireland games so am not sure why you thought he was relevant to the discussion. Certainly his career long lack of conditioning was a weakness that he shared with Zebo, but that's where any comparison ends!

Yeah it is, but then look what I was replying to. The point stands though - try scoring record with Munster isn't by itself anything to suggest he was more or less of an international starter and as demonstrated it might actually say more about Munster's back three options than the player himself (an indictment if you will 😉)

I feel this has been answered already. Starting Outhalf for Ireland in a world cup quarter final is literally one of the most important positions on the pitch at our exact ceiling of performance. Zebo didn't make the bench for that game.

If Madigan wasn't available for the Romania game you would absolutely be concerned at a tournament level and given we narrowly enough beat Scotland him not starting would be a concern specifically for that match (it wasn't a critical fixture but not sure why you would rule it out?). So yes, quite a few of a his small number of starts would have been impacted by him being ruled out. Certainly - him being ruled out from a significant number of his bench starts would have been similarly concerning. Would you say the same about any of Zebo's starts? If the back three was one position (the same as out half) would Zebo even have been capped?

I think we'd have beaten Romania without Madigan - but as I said, at a tournament level if we dropped an out half that absolutely would have been an concern, especially with Sexton ruled out during the pool stages for the knock outs. Similarly if we lost to Scotland in a warm up we'd be a lot less confident going into a World Cup. I don't know what about that surprises you - Madigan had 7 starts 3 of which were games we either lost, narrowly won or were world cup pool games. IN any of those circumstances do you want to lose your starting outhalf? Compare that to losing Zebo in any of his starts.

As for Madigan being versatile, at club level maybe - but he only wore 10 or 22 for Ireland. I've no doubt his versatility had value (was it Madigan who was down as third choice 9 going into 2015 RWC?) but in reality his time in green was almost entirely at out half, so it's not really relevant when comparing to someone who covered across the back three and regularly switched position for club and country.

Madigan dropped behind Sheedy quite quickly after his first season where he was first choice at Bristol. Zebo lasted one full season longer before drifting out of favour at Racing. And bar one year in the championship, Madigan played Premiership and Top 14 - is top level rugby reserved only for teams in the top half of those leagues or what do you mean by consistently at the top level? Mack Hansen spent most of the league playing for a bottom half club - does that mean he isn't playing top level club rugby?

As for Zebo's tries for Munster as against Leinsters top scorers - you are making my point. Far more back 3 competition at Leinster reduces chances for players to rack up the numbers, Horgan wouldn't get close to that number if he was with Leinster the last decade. Bod and Darcy aren't even back three players but got lots of caps due to a lack of competition at centre. Seems the common denominator as much as anything is a lack of competition / depth in the particular position, thanks for helping me illustrate that.

Don't get me wrong, Leinster struggled for a good while at wing (back three), Darragh Fanning was racking up tries at one point for us - and we had a lot of good but not great options like Dave, McFaddan, Adam Byrne, Kirchner etc, good players, some Ireland exposure / success but never at that 'guaranteed an international spot' standard. Adam Byrne has a similar try scoring record compared to Zebo (24 tries in 64 games) - you would imagine if he stayed healthy and wasn't sitting behind the likes of Lowe, Larmour, Keenan, O'Brien (all of whom are better players) he'd have racked up a decent record.

To really highlight the lack of merit in try scoring 'total' as a statistic, I see Nacewa only has 47 tries in 185 caps for Leinster and yet no team anywhere in the world would pick Zebo over Nacewa.