One moment summed up Jean Kleyn’s 2022/23 for me and it came in an unusual place – a pregame presser.
I’ve been in a lot of these and 98.47578% of them are routine. Journos or ego-maniacal humble content creators like myself ask questions – sometimes tripping over each other’s questions like awkward digital street dancing – and the players/coaches answer in the most non-controversial way possible. Sometimes they’re livened up by someone asking a question so stupid or feeble that you almost feel the eye-rolls coming through the screen. Sometimes the feeble question produces a bit of magic. This was the 1.52422% of press conferences that showcased exactly where this Munster squad were mentally.
One of the journalists asked Kleyn a fairly milquetoast question about Munster being in “bonus territory” ahead of the URC final in Cape Town. The implication was that Munster shouldn’t have beaten Leinster and, because they did, anything that happens after is just a dizzy little daydream because, shucks, we should just be happy – delirious, even – to beat Leinster in the semi-final.
Kleyn’s response was pitch-perfect.
“Well, we are absolutely not in bonus territory. There’s nothing “bonus” about this. This is what we play for, this is what we’ve been working for the last 48 weeks. It’s a final, it wasn’t a victory over Leinster in the semi-final.
In the greater scheme of things that means absolutely nothing to us. Like, why should a victory over Leinster in a semi-final be bigger than a victory over the reigning champions at their home ground? You’ve flown 10,000 kilometres to play in front of a crowd of 55,000 people, of which maybe 53,000 will be Stormers supporters. How is that overshadowed by a victory over Leinster?
Look, I’m not taking anything away from the victory over Leinster, it was obviously a very big thing for us but that’s not the be-all and end-all. That’s not why we play. Munster isn’t there to beat Leinster, Munster is there to win championships.”
If you wanted an idea of where Munster were, mentally, after that semi-final it absolutely wasn’t cartwheeling around Cape Town looking for easy outs when it came to the pressure of a final. The journo assumed Kleyn would be only dying to turn the heat down the expectations. Bonus territory? Kleyn wasn’t having any equivocating. Munster isn’t there to beat Leinster, Munster is there to win championships.
And win a championship we did.
It was a ballsy move. The one thing you don’t do in pressers is put your head above the parapet but there Kleyn was; taking a stroll on top of the parapet, talking the talk. If he and Munster didn’t walk the walk to go with it, he’d have been shithoused with “Munster is here to win championships” for days, if not weeks, on end.
So what does he do? He plays 68 minutes of heavy metal rugby to keep Munster within striking distance of the Stormers, setting the platform that we’d need to (a) take the lead (b) keep in touch once we lost it and (c) give us a shot at winning the game. Setting a platform is what Jean Kleyn does. He’s a big player, a big leader and a big presence in this Munster squad. Quite simply, we’re a vastly better side when Jean Kleyn is wearing #4 on his back.
He’s a cornerstone of the Munster pack and has been ever since he joined in 2016. In the last seven seasons, he’s become one of the best tighthead locks anywhere in the game.
***
Jean Kleyn was voted the Senior Player of the Year for 2023/24 by a significant margin.
He won that vote without doing all the things that normally pull a second row out for attention. He’s not a freak athlete and offensive phenom like Snyman. He’s not a Mr Does It All like Tadhg Beirne who can do everything from flinging offloads to stepping outside backs to winning killer breakdown penalties. He’s not a Double 15 type forward who’ll give you 15+ carries and 15+ tackles every other game.
No, Kleyn won it by being Munster’s Mr Dependable in one of the areas of the field where dependability really matters. Proper elite tighthead locks are rare and, in Jean Kleyn, Munster have a top-five player in that roleset. Jean Kleyn had 24 starts for Munster last season and maybe had a poor game once or twice. He was astonishingly consistent. Every other game saw him doing what good tighthead locks do best. I’m not just talking about smashing rucks, dominating tackles, scrummaging high and getting into the heavy machinery at the lineout – because he did all that and then some – I’m talking about being a force multiplier.
It’s the most misunderstood part of that role. With a proper tighthead lock, you’ve got the perfect tight presence to shore up your phase play on both sides of the ball and at the set piece so that allows you to go for lighter, maybe more explosive athletes in your back five – and front row – because so much of the heavy lifting can fall onto your tighthead lock’s shoulders.
That was Jean Kleyn this season. When he was our only fit senior second row over 6’6″ and 120kg in the middle point of the season, he anchored our pack when we were getting outsized every other game. He was a force multiplier for our younger, more inexperienced locks. When we finally managed to get both Beirne and Snyman fit in the latter half of the season Kleyn was a force multiplier for them, too. All of a sudden, we were more than holding our own against packs that had slapped us up at different points of the season. You could argue that, in the last six games, we had the best back five and replacements in the United Rugby Championship and Jean Kleyn was the cornerstone of that.
His efforts didn’t go unnoticed at test level either. I’m not going to re-litigate the whole Kleyn/Ireland thing but let’s put it this way – when Rassie Erasmus and Jacques Nienaber realised back in January/February that Jean was going to become eligible for the Springboks again and that Kleyn was a non-factor for the Six Nations they moved quickly.
He could well make the World Cup for the Springboks this Autumn and, if he does, he’ll more than deserve it.
