After Stander’s glorious goodbye is it now time for our wild geese to come back in from the cold?

On Saturday, he re-tweeted every available image of an emotionally tangled CJ Stander through those intimate minutes immediately after the destruction of England. Stander and Zebo were, of course, Munster team-mates for six years before the Corkman moved to Paris. It’s clear that a genuine sense of brotherhood survives.

But the stories of these two 30-year-olds capture one of Irish rugby’s jarring contradictions.

Specifically how the project player concept sits so uncomfortably in parallel with the IRFU’s policy on players employed overseas. Zebo has, effectively, been lost to the game here since that May evening in 2018 when both Munster and Leinster supporters applauded him off the RDS field after a PRO14 semi-final. By moving to France, he effectively drew a line under his international career at the 35-cap mark.

His time in the French Top 14 has been an undoubted success, Racing 92 reaching last year’s European Champions Cup final, Zebo scoring two tries in a narrow loss to Exeter Chiefs.

He is expected to leave Paris this summer, though, sparking speculation of a possible return to a Munster and – theoretically – an Ireland shirt.

In these pages last July, Zebo admitted that the Union’s policy of excluding overseas players from international consideration was “definitely annoying”, reflecting: “It’s not like I’ve gone to New Zealand. Like, my time’s probably gone now but for other players in the future . . . to be told you can’t leave the country or you won’t play for Ireland . . . I just don’t agree with it.”

There is, of course, logic to the policy.

The workload of centrally contracted players can be carefully monitored when at home. In other words, the Union keeps control of its key assets.

But how can it honestly be tenable that an Irishman, someone born and raised in Cork, who grew up within the Irish schools and club system, who played hurling for Blackrock, is deemed ineligible to play in green, but a farmer’s son from George, South Africa, a former captain of the Springbok U-20s, can?

This is no criticism of Stander, incidentally.

As project players go, he has been exemplary. Indeed so much of the Irish team’s energy on Saturday clearly came plumbed into a group compulsion to honour him on his final appearance in green.

Before playing Scotland, Andy Farrell described Stander as “the most honest bloke that I’ve ever worked with. I’d be 100 per cent proud to call him a friend for life.”

And after Saturday’s win, Robbie Henshaw – speaking of “a massively emotional performance” – reflected: “It was important for us as a group to finish on as high a note as possible for a number of reasons, but for CJ mainly.”

Stander has been both honourable and heroic in Munster and Ireland jerseys. And he has been duly loved.

Saturday reiterated why.

Addressing the team as captain on Friday night, Jonathan Sexton focused specifically on an obligation not to be cowed by England’s physicality, something that sat at the heart of Ireland’s four consecutive losses to Eddie Jones’ men since that glorious Grand Slam day at Twickenham in 2018.

The captain spoke of how England would seek to inflict damage with two-man tackles, looking to make it feel as if the players were running “into a brick wall”.

Two minutes in, Stander encountered precisely what Sexton promised, both Mako Vunipola and Kyle Sinckler hitting him in brutal tandem. And the Irish number six? He did not concede a yard.

That, largely, was the tenor of business; England leaning heavily on their powers of physical discouragement only to find opponents absolutely determined not to bend.

Both Irish tries were wonderful essays in dynamism and, more importantly, tactical creativity. But, above all, it was attitude that won this day. And Stander, to be fair, was front and centre of it.

Through one sublime tableau during the third quarter, he ran into a speeding freight train in the form of Billy Vunipola and Tom Curry, bouncing instantly to his feet and blowing his cheeks out with a grin like a prize-fighter mouthing ‘that the best you’ve got?’

And Stander’s words when it was over suggested an understanding of the conflicting nature of the project players’ status within Six Nations rugby generally, not simply in Ireland.

Last year’s changing of the residency rule from three to five years will go some way towards subduing references to flags of convenience and there’s certainly little comparison between a story like Stander’s and that of his compatriot, Duhan van der Merwe, whose Edinburgh contract qualified him to play for Scotland last year only for the winger to recently sign a lucrative deal with Worcester.

“I work hard for the jersey, to be in this jersey,” Stander said while looking glassy-eyed around the deserted Dublin stadium.

“I wanted to give everything for that jersey because I feel everything has been given to me that I needed to perform in the last few years. I just wish my family could be here, especially my wife and my daughter . . . and the supporters.

“We spoke about that at half-time. We said, imagine that’s (20-6) the score and we’re running in at half-time, this place would have erupted. If you’re sitting at home tonight, again I’m saying this, the team really played for that jersey tonight and for everyone who couldn’t be here.

“Thanks from the bottom of my heart as CJ Stander for all the support, for everything you’ve done for me and my family.”

It was clearly heartfelt and sincere, a genuine farewell that resonated deafeningly within the Irish dressing-room. The best project player to play for Ireland was signing off in green to, quite possibly, finish his career where it started. Back home.

And leaving behind?

A game here richly thankful for his near decade among us, but one now wrestling too with a financial model that Covid surely imperils. After all, how viable can those central contracts remain to a Union strapped for cash?

Time for our wild geese to come back in from the cold?