2 days ago
Gabriel Ibitoye is the most divisive player in English rugby
Whether you are staring at his entrancing footwork or examining his mind-bending statistics, you can quickly start to feel dizzy around Gabriel Ibitoye.
At the end of the regular season, the Bristol Bears winger finished as the Gallagher's Premiership joint top try scorer with Ollie Hassell-Collins, having played fewer games.
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Among English wings, he finished top for carries (152), break assists (11), metres gained (1179), offloads (25) and passes (117) – the latter three categories by massive margins.
Extrapolate that across the United Rugby Championship and Top 14 and no other wing in Europe scores more tries, gains more metres, passes more frequently or carries more on a per-80 minute basis than Ibitoye, according to statistics provided by Opta.
Even Bordeaux sensation Louis Bielle-Biarrey does not match his strike rate of more than a try a game.
And yet the 27-year-old remains uncapped by England and did not even feature in head coach Steve Borthwick's most recent training squad, which did not include any Lions, Bath or Northampton players.
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Certainly with the likes of Tommy Freeman, Immanuel Feyi-Waboso and Tom Roebuck, England are well stocked in the wing department, but Ibitoye's combination of devastating footwork and freakish handling skills seem born from a different planet.
It is hard to escape the feeling that there's a peculiar English mistrust of those who possess a startling point of difference over more well-rounded alternatives, a sentiment shared by Pat Lam, the Bears director of rugby.
'I honestly believe he would be an All Black if he was born there, I really do,' Lam told Telegraph Sport. 'I know Scott Robertson well and if he was a Kiwi he would be an All Black and thriving at that.'
Beyond reference to the 'competitive arena' in the wide positions, Borthwick has not directly referenced why he has overlooked Ibitoye. Others have taken up that mantle on his behalf, referencing Ibitoye's defence, high-ball work and perceived work-rate. There are few more divisive players in the Premiership on social media.
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Lam is keen to address what he calls some 'lazy narratives' that have sprung up around Ibitoye, authorising Bristol's strength and conditioning team to release the metrics they keep on players' work-rate in games.
On average, Ibitoye will record up to 1,200 metres of high speed running, which is defined as 19km/h in an average game – more than a Bronco Test and more than 400m of very high-speed running, defined as 25.2 km/h; this would be the equivalent of running a 5km race in 11min 54sec. Ibitoye will also record 23 repeat-effort bouts which consist of three individual efforts separated by 20 seconds or less.
'Sometimes with the guys who are different you find that they don't work but honestly his work-rate is so high,' Lam said.
His other standout quality, according to Lam, is his game intelligence and being able to anticipate how play will develop. 'It is not an accident that he ends up in the right places,' Lam said. 'When you understand the game, you're one step ahead so then you can get to those positions really quickly.'
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As an example, Lam highlights Ibitoye's try against Harlequins at the Stoop earlier this season (see 1m 33sec into video below). By his standards, it was a fairly routine affair, taking Kieran Marmion's pass and running 40 metres untouched, but the simplicity of the finish belies the anticipation of where the space would be.
'He came from the other wing on that score because he could see that the D was coming up on the edge and he started to wander down the front line and then he saw there was no one down the short side,' Lam said. 'We have a call for it and he said that to Kieran and then, bang, he was able to give the dummy. He knew that Gabs was there without looking. Gabs changed his angle as well to get the run-in. That's an example of his ability to know what is going to happen next and put himself in a position to do it.'
Lam does not pretend that Ibitoye is the complete package. He would not match the high-ball work of either Freeman or Roebuck. Defensively, he can occasionally look vulnerable, but Lam believes that Ibitoye's failings are put under a greater microscope than his rivals.
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'He has made mistakes,' Lam said. 'I have seen all those England wingers miss tackles but when they miss tackles no one talks about it. When he misses a tackle, everyone focuses on that rather than the eight or nine that he makes. Same with his high-ball work. You can set the narrative to anything you want if you go searching for examples.'
After being named in the Premiership's team of the season, Ibitoye will have a further opportunity to put his name in lights in Friday's Premiership semi-final against Bath at the Rec.
Lam believes that should Ibitoye carry over his form into next season then Borthwick would have no choice but to pick him.
'There's no doubt when Steve came in with the England team a couple of years ago that he would have struggled in the way they were playing,' Lam said. 'But the England team now, with the way they have evolved, the generation that are coming through now and the desire to attack, he would really thrive with that.
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'There's so many good players, but Gabs is something that is slightly different to everyone else. Someone like Tommy Freeman is a class player, but you need a complement to him. Tommy does the basics really well. He might not have the skill-set that Gabs has but he has the basics of chase hard, get up quickly, he's strong, he's powerful, he's tall. If those two played together you would have a great complement.'
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