The last time Munster played Toulon away in the Champions Cup, two years ago this weekend, Simon Zebo was the red 15. Without a win in their opening two pool matches, Munster trailed 10-0 after 23 minutes and were skidding towards a ditch.
The airbag turned out to be a pair of tries. Zebo got the second. The creative credits were shared between the outhalf and the fullback, producer and director. Zebo spotted a thin peninsula of space behind the Toulon cover and shouted at team-mate Jack Crowley to kick. His sumptuous chip greeted Zebo on the first bounce.
Behind the try line Zebo was swamped by Munster players, but a photographer, Laszlo Geczo, got a clean shot of Zebo’s wild eyes and the rapture on his face.
Great photographs are never silent and Zebo’s roar is the soundtrack of the picture. His top jaw and his bottom jaw are frozen at full stretch, like a hippopotamus’s.
As a player this was his shtick: flashes of lightning. “The brighter the lights the better I play,” Zebo had said in an interview before the game.
That was his 35th try in the Champions Cup, which put him third on the all-time list. It was also his last. By the end of that season his heart and his legs had reached a state of irreconcilable differences and Zebo retired.
“I would have liked to think that I could have played another year, but definitely not two,” Zebo says now.
“It wasn’t the matches. I could have played matches for another three years if it was just that. It was the weekly toll that was being taken. Getting to Saturday to play the match was getting harder and harder.”
Simon Zebo interviews Munster's Alex Nankivell after the 23-20 win over
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