Munster has missed many guys through injury in the last two seasons, but none have been missed so profoundly as Jean Kleyn.
In the URC title-winning season of 2022/23, Munster used Jean Kleyn 24 times, each time as a starter. His impact across that season – averaging 63 minutes a game as a 6’8″, 125kg tighthead lock no less – was undeniable, and he played a huge role in Munster’s success in that campaign. So much so, that Rassie Erasmus went to the bother, even with all the media hubbub that it would undeniably cause, to get Jean Kleyn to re-declare for the Springboks that summer. It would go so well that Kleyn ended up making the Springboks’ World Cup squad and finished the tournament with a winner’s medal having played a big role in the final.
Of course, that then led to a conundrum with Munster’s contracting during the 2023/24 season, when it soon became clear that David Nucifora wanted to engineer RG Snyman out of Munster, now that Jean Kleyn was freshly non-Irish qualified. To that point, Snyman’s presence in Munster’s second row – so much as 20 games in four years could be defined as “presence” – for two contracts was based on Jean Kleyn, who qualified for Ireland through residency, being Irish qualified.
Nucifora argued that you can’t have two NIQ locks in the same pack. Munster argued that Andy Farrell was entirely responsible for Kleyn becoming a NIQ because Kleyn was clearly good enough to be selected for a World Cup-winning Springbok team, so why should Munster be punished for what was, ultimately, someone else’s error?
Nucifora wasn’t for shifting and approved RG Snyman’s transfer to Leinster right before jetting out the door himself to sell the Scottish Rugby Union on the idea that they too can have a Leinster Schools System providing talent for them. Let’s hope for David’s sake that he’s filled them in about all the stuff they’ll have to pay for that Leinster don’t – right after he gets back from his Lions junket, of course – or I have a feeling his next gig might be “consulting” with North Haverbrook RFC.
But I digress.
Ultimately, Munster chose between the two and picked Kleyn over Snyman. There were emotional reasons for that, of course; Kleyn was a stalwart of the club who played well over 130 games for Munster at the point this decision was being made. He had a young family here, and a house. But there was much more to it, too. Kleyn was and is a leader and big character in the group and had been a cornerstone of our pack for multiple seasons at that point.
Before 2023/24, Kleyn put down three 20+ appearance seasons in a row, something he only failed to do twice in the seven years before signing his new deal in November 2023, just after the World Cup, which came into effect in July 2024.
That all plays a part in making that choice. Especially when you’re choosing between him and a guy who hung around South Africa for two weeks after the World Cup, putting off surgery that was going to keep him out for months, especially when guys like Handre Pollard were flying back to their clubs immediately to get their injuries looked after.
Plus, we’d seen what Snyman without Kleyn looked like in the second half of that season. Feckless, half-arsed, ditched a Champions Cup knockout game because he was sick when guys like Craig Casey, Tom Ahern and a dozen others were puking on the side of the pitch with the same thing. Sure, he was good for a flashy offload or lineout catch once a game, and he was lethal inside the 5m line, but nobody can tell me that the RG Snyman we saw playing for Munster at the tail end of 2023/24 looked like the guy we needed.
And what we needed was the thing.
Munster chose Kleyn, for all the right reasons, and did so while he missed the entirety of the 2023/24 season through an optical nerve injury sustained in his first game back after the World Cup against Leinster, before undergoing a knee operation that would keep him out for 10 months.
When Kleyn came back into the Munster side at the start of the season, he, like a lot of guys, looked wildly off the pace technically and physically. I mean, when I watched those games back recently, both Kleyn and Jager, in particular, looked like shadows of themselves.
When you juxtapose that with Snyman doing pretty much what he was doing for Munster at the tail-end of last season, but in Leinster’s pack hammering all before them, it made it look like we’d made the wrong choice.
Snyman was a perfect finishing piece in the Leinster tight five – a luxury player that they could afford, both financially and from a systemic perspective. When we needed Snyman to show up for us and, essentially, play Jean Kleyn’s role last season. We maybe saw it twice away in South Africa and then that was it. Go back and watch Munster’s defeat to Glasgow in that semi-final and tell me that if you simply swapped Snyman with Kleyn, that we wouldn’t have won. At Leinster, they don’t need Snyman to play that kind of role. They have the power and playing system that allows him to affect the game in bits and pieces without having to break his bollocks scrummaging or on maul defence. At Leinster in the early going of the season it was all offloads, smiles and derision that Munster didn’t pick The Viking®™.
By comparison, Jean Kleyn wasn’t playing well in a pack that looked all over the place, and the vibes were… off.
When November rolled around, Kleyn got a call-up to the Springbok squad after a few injuries in the second row and picked up a neck injury during training before their game against Scotland. When he came back to Munster, he injured his quad during training and required surgery, which kept him out until approximately three weeks ago, when he made his return off the bench against Connacht where he made a game winning impact off the bench with a clutch lineout steal right at the end of the game.
That was encouraging. His 20+ minute cameo in that game showcased way more of what we know about Jean Kleyn – his toughness in the carry off #9, his defensive work-rate and his excellence at the set piece.
This all comes back to Rassie Erasmus and whether you consider him to be the best coach in the world at the moment or not. For me, Erasmus understands the value of roles as well, if not better, than any coach working in the game. Why did he go looking for Kleyn at the end of the 2022/23 season? He had De Jager, Mostert, Etzebeth, Snyman, plus a bunch of high potential younger guys that had already been in the environment for a while at that point. Sure, De Jager pulled out of the Bok squad later that summer, but Erasmus didn’t know that when he brought a 29-year-old Jean Kleyn into the fold.
He brought in Kleyn because he’s the closest player in the game to Eben Etzebeth when you consider his core qualities.
Think about it; what does Eben Etzebeth bring? If you’re thinking about his biceps right now and how that must mean he’s a big ball carrier, you’re already wrong. Erasmus used Kleyn as his Etzebeth role-twin for the Boks in the buildup to and at the 2023 World Cup. Whenever Kleyn and Etzebeth were in the same squad, Kleyn replaced Etzebeth off the bench every single time to continue in the same role to give the team the same platform. When Kleyn was in a squad without Etzebeth, he played the full 80 minutes every time because there wasn’t a natural role replacement to bring off the bench to replace him.
Etzebeth’s core qualities are his offensive ruck work, his impact defence, and his tight carrying at close range, but his super-strength for the Boks is his work at the scrum, lineout maul on both sides of the ball.
Kleyn’s super-strengths lie in the same areas and while he’s not as athletic as Etzebeth on the ball during phase play, Kleyn is every bit as good as Etzebeth in the maul, lineout and the scrum, in particular. That’s why Erasmus wanted him and it’s where he’s always been at his best for Munster as a genuine level raiser.
Against La Rochelle on Saturday, we didn’t go backwards in the maul or scrum in large part because of the presence of Jean Kleyn. The height and power he brings to our scrum, in combination with Jager is a genuine difference maker for us and his ability to destroy the jumper at the front of defensive mauls denies the opposition a core area of forward momentum.
The first few months of the season were rough, but Kleyn can show everyone exactly why Munster would pick him every single time compared to anyone else in the run in.
