Jean Kleyn’s selection for the Springboks is a Rassie Erasmus masterstroke — and one that will get into the heads of Ireland.
Kleyn, who played 24 matches for Western Province and 18 for the Stormers between 2014 and 2016, has played for Munster in Ireland for the past seven years. He made the 2019 Ireland World Cup squad and played the last of his five Tests in October 2019.
Joe Schmidt was the coach of Ireland in 2019, but his successor Andy Farrell has not looked the way of Kleyn, despite the South African-born and raised lock being among the standouts in Munster’s 2022/23 United Rugby Championship title success.
Kleyn, alongside fellow South African RG Snyman, was particularly impressive as Munster came from behind to fashion a famous 19-14 victory against the Stormers in the final. This game was played out in front of a capacity crowd of 56,600 at the DHL Stadium and in a few weeks’ time, Kleyn is expected to make his Test debut for the Springboks at Loftus in Pretoria in front of 50,000 capacity.
Eddie Jones’s Wallabies are in South Africa for the opening round of the Rugby Championship, which has been reduced from six matches to three because it is World Cup year. The margin for error is zero. You lose a home game, and you are basically gone.
Erasmus and Bok coach Jacques Nienaber are down on their lock stocks. The global game’s No. 1 lock enforcer Eben Etzebeth is recovering from injury and unlikely to play in the Rugby Championship.
Enter Kleyn.
When Ireland did not select Kleyn in their extended World Cup squad of 40-plus players, it was obvious he was not going to play for Ireland again, despite only turning 30 in August.
Kudos to Erasmus and Nienaber for the speed at which they acted once Kleyn was not picked for Ireland and fair play to the player for not hedging his bets.
Kleyn had initially qualified for Ireland under World Rugby’s residency rule and the change in World Rugby’s eligibility laws meant that a player could switch nations, if he qualified through birth or ancestry, and if he had not played Test rugby for three years.
Kleyn, the right player, at the right time, is the perfect fit for these Boks.
His Bok squad selection is no guarantee he will go to the World Cup, but he certainly is in the front of the queue at the start of an international season that will see the Boks play 14 Tests if they are to make it to the World Cup final in Paris on October 28.
Nienaber and Erasmus coached Kleyn when he played for the Stormers. They also coached him at Munster. They have no doubt of his value.
His second-row partnership with Snyman for Munster has further strengthened the logic behind his Bok selection.
Ireland’s rugby leadership will publicly dismiss Kleyn’s Bok selection, given he has not featured in Farrell’s tenure as Ireland coach, but Erasmus and Nienaber know how invaluable Kleyn’s experience of playing for — and in — Ireland will be to the Boks’ preparations for their crunch World Cup Pool match against Ireland in Paris.
But it will annoy them that he is there.
Kudos to Erasmus and Nienaber for the speed at which they acted once Kleyn was not picked for Ireland and fair play to the player for not hedging his bets. Kleyn, grateful for experience of Test rugby with Ireland, made it clear that in an ideal world playing for the Springboks stirred the blood that much more. He was born and raised in South Africa and made his professional debut for Western Province and the Stormers in 2014.
He is South African, with a hint of adopted Irish in him — and that combination makes his presence a rather intoxicating World Cup cocktail if you are South African.
Not so, if you are from Ireland.
Kleyn is one selection Ireland will rue and South Africa will revel in, especially when you consider his contribution for Munster this past club season.
Kleyn, who has played 136 matches for Munster since 2016, started in all 24 of his appearances in the URC (19) and Champions Cup (5) and played 1,508 minutes for an average of 63 minutes a game. He also played the full 80 in six of the 24 matches.
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