Residency rules in rugby are controversial unless the players qualifying under residency laws happen to play for your team.
It’s been one of the main pillars of the game of rugby union in Ireland over the past 8 years.
Your residency players are mercenaries, foreign bandits, and money-grabbing highwaymen stealing caps from real, proper Irish players (who happen to play for My Team) and who have dreamed of playing for Ireland since they were two days old. You’re trying to tell me that babies that young have no concept of international rugby? No way. Fuck that. Ours do, because they love Irish rugby so much. And your exotic soldiers of fortune have robbed that dream from those two-day-old babies. More monster than man? Not for me to say.
On the other hand, our residency players are nearly as Irish as St. Patrick himself, who was so Irish he was actually Welsh, so it fits. They thank the bus driver, they feel real pride in detecting a bad pint and sure, haven’t they had to run back home to make sure the immersion is off, just like the rest of us Irish guys, right?
Right?
Right?
I know there are more complex discussions around it but in my experience, those discussions become very simple when the “problem”, such as it is, comes to your own door. For example, check out the vociferous reaction in the doofus press to guys like CJ Stander, Bundee Aki and Jean Kleyn when they initially qualified for Ireland. Then compare that to the feeble response when James Lowe and Jamison Gibson Park qualified a few years later.
When the residency players were playing for teams outside the M50, the papers, radio shows and podcasts that live inside the M50 couldn’t wait to clamber into them at every turn about the dreams and caps stolen. When the residency players were someone you could see ordering an overpriced scone in Avoca in Ballsbridge a few years later, all the issues seemed to evaporate overnight.
I wonder what the difference was?
Because when the project player (boo! hiss!) is someone you might feasibly meet in real life, they stop becoming a mercenary and start becoming what they are – human beings playing a tough game for work who are making their lives here and giving up the limited minutes they have in this sport for our country. Rugby is a game that leaves everyone who plays it at the highest level with something to remember it by when they finish. Some are luckier in this regard than others so anyone who plays this game for you is giving something of themselves that they’ll never get back whenever they do so.
Every rhetorical boogeyman idea you’ve ever heard on this topic was just that. Balls.ie seemed to release a Possible Ireland Project Player XV every other year with all the self-flagellating relish of a Youtube conservative screeching about how someone is turning the freakin’ frogs gay.
It was never, ever going to happen but it added to this idea that the forriners were coming over here and taking our jobs and that was often how the Project Player Panic was framed, especially in the doofus press by the kind of dopes that were never clever enough to hide their dog whistles. These men used dog trumpets.
This was never more evident than when Jean Kleyn was named in Joe Schmidt’s ahead of Leinster’s Devin Toner.
The reaction was intense.
Toner’s ex-Leinster pals in the papers, radio slots and podcasts all went to bat for Ireland’s tallest bald man and Kleyn was the unfortunate recipient of the dog trumpeting that followed. At times I felt that Luke Fitzgerald’s face might collapse in on itself such was the peevishness emanating from it.
“South Africa v South Africa ‘A’ in the World Cup QF…if all goes to plan #brokensystem” tweeted Luke Fitzgerald in the immediate aftermath before – hilariously – adding “#theshaftofallshafts”.
Some of “our own” were only too happy to put the boot in too.
It was a pretty uncomfortable time for Jean Kleyn because you try to avoid getting tangled up in media shitshows but it’s almost impossible. It’s like sand and wetsuits – it manages to get in no matter how zipped up you think you are.
Kleyn played five times for Ireland that Autumn, with three of those being World Cup warmup games. He took more than his fair share of the blame for Ireland’s poor performance in the pack in those warmups in what would go on to be a year-long trend for Schmidt’s Ireland in 2019. But, realistically, he’d have needed near-perfect, peak Paul O’Connell-tier performances to keep the legions of Leinster pundits off his case. They wanted him to have played like shit so Devin Toner’s omission looked all the more scandalous and that’s what they saw.
For the record, I think Schmidt was right at the time. Toner was below test level at that point and, at 33/34, was exactly the player that Ireland should have been moving on from at that stage. He was out injured for most of the 2018/19 run-in after an ankle injury in the disastrous Six Nations campaign of 2019 and picked up a knee injury in the last game of the season in mid-May.
Jean would go on to play the two B-tier games of that pool against Russia and Samoa and he was… grand. No better or worse than the other second rows involved in either game and wasn’t involved in either the Japan game or the quarter-final against the All Blacks.
That would be Kleyn’s last involvement with the Irish squad. Under Farrell, he has made zero (0) Ireland camps, never mind match-day squads in the following four years. That hasn’t been enough for some, however, especially the lads who would have to strap on oxygen tanks and enlist the services of a rocket to elevate themselves to a point where you could call them the gutter press.
Kleyn has just kept on trucking, however, and made himself the cornerstone of a Munster pack that punched above its weight almost consistently. You might ask yourself “what??” when you see that sentence but go back and look at some of those front fives we’ve selected – mainly through injury – over the last four years. When you see that team still making finals, and semi-finals and pushing teams like Toulouse all the way in knockout games, you’re seeing the influence of a guy like Jean Kleyn. He was playing at a consistently high level for the last three years and if this comes as a shock to you, it shouldn’t.
My main test for whether people understand forward play and the importance of roles is to ask their opinion of Jean Kleyn. If it’s positive, they know ball. If it’s negative, they don’t know ball. It’s a simple test, but it’s quite effective.
Andy Farrell has the right to select whatever team he wants, of course, but for me, every single team that wants to win things needs a tighthead lock like Jean Kleyn in their squad. Having trouble with a big French pack? Put Kleyn on the bench and pair him with Ryan for the last 20/25 minutes after Henderson gives you a big sixty. That allows Beirne to move back to a half-lock role and allows you to play bigger in the aggregate, with more quality.
He doesn’t have to feature in every game or every matchday squad but that size and roleset are always useful, especially when you consider the potential it had to free up James Ryan. My contention was never that Kleyn should be starting ahead of James Ryan which, for some reason, is the default assumption of most whenever I’ve mentioned this. Maybe there’s still some scar tissue there over Big Dev so they assume every time Jean Kleyn is mentioned, a Leinster lock gets #theshaftofallshafts.
But the call never came. It wasn’t that Farrell had an issue with project players either – he made Gibson-Park and Lowe key starters during his tenure – but it seemed that for whatever reason, Kleyn was on the outs.
While all this was going on, World Rugby changed its eligibility criteria under Regulation 8.
There are two segments of that regulation change that are relevant here and they are;
Subject to Regulation 8.2, a Player may only play for the senior fifteen-a-side National Representative Team, the next senior fifteen-a-side National Representative Team and the senior National Representative Sevens Team of the Union of the country with which the Player has a genuine, close, credible and established national link in which:
(a) the Player was born; or
(b) one parent or grandparent was born; or
(c) the Player has completed sixty consecutive months of Residence immediately preceding the time of playing; or
(d) the Player has completed ten years of cumulative Residence preceding the time of playing.
When you combine that with regulation 8.6;
A Player who has represented one Union (as set out in Regulation 8.2 to 8.4) may apply to represent a new Union provided that:
(i) the Player meets the eligibility criteria set out in Regulation 8.1(a) or 8.1(b) in relation to the new Union; and
(ii) at least three years have passed since the Player last represented their former Union; and
(iii) the approval of World Rugby is obtained.
And, just like that, the timer slowly ticked down on Jean Kleyn’s Irish eligibility and his potential re-eligibility for South Africa. The rule has primarily benefited players of Pacific Island heritage but the same criteria applied to Kleyn so, when Jacques Neinaber and Rassie Erasmus came calling – the same guys who brought him to Munster in 2016 – Jean was left with a tough decision.
Re-declaring for South Africa was going to be controversial but would it lead to the same scorn and peevishness that he experienced in 2019? He still wanted to play test rugby and was plainly good enough for it but Andy Farrell and Paul O’Connell had no intention of using him, instead calling up Kieran Treadwell and Joe McCarthy consistently over the last 18 months.
Again, that’s their right but much like Ben Healy, if you’ve got test options outside the closed shop (not my words) of the Irish Rugby HPU, why not explore those to play rugby at the highest level? It remains to be seen if Jean Kleyn’s newly found NIQ status affects his Munster contract going forward. Ben Healy’s contract was different in that if he wanted to represent Scotland, he needed to make the move there but that doesn’t always apply to South African players when it comes to the Springboks. Munster’s ability to retain him under those new criteria is a different story.
Kleyn already enacted the transfer back in the last few weeks at the Springboks’ behest so, in essence, he’s already Non-Irish Qualified under regulation 8.8 of the above even though he hasn’t been capped yet;
A Player may only transfer pursuant to Regulation 8.6 or 8.7 once so that no Player may represent more than two Unions in their lifetime.
This opens potential complications for Munster when it comes to renewing Jean Kleyn’s contract – which expires at the end of next season – as what would have been an easy signup as long as we could afford his demands now requires the permission of David Nucifora as Kleyn is now as NIQ as RG Snyman or any other player that can’t play for Ireland. As a result, the question might now be asked if Kleyn is “blocking” the minutes of young IQ players who might go on to play for Ireland, which Kleyn will no longer be able to do
It’s a distinct possibility.
I can’t help but feel that Ireland will come to regret not using the physical and role-specific talents of Jean Kleyn at some point. The Springboks calling him up as, essentially, Eben Etzebeth’s role cover is all the evidence you need that he’s That Guy when it comes to the power that Irish teams say they need consistently.
We’ll see the error of our ways sooner rather than later, I think.
