It’s really hard to state how big a season this is for Keynan Knox.
In December 2017, Keynan Knox moved to Limerick off the back of strong performances in that year’s Craven Week. It didn’t really cause much of a stir at the time. The first I saw of it was when Keynan Knox showed up in Gerbrandt Grobler’s Instagram around Christmas 2017 with another young South African academy signing, Matt More – currently at the Lions, by the way – and I immediately thought… uh, who the hell are they?
A quick bit of Googling brought up this Youtube sizzle reel of Knox playing for his school, Michaelhouse, and the Sharks underage side at Craven Week. As sizzle reels go, it’s a pretty good one – and that’s coming from a guy who likes his sizzle reels. You can see Knox’s strengths straight away. He’s a bull of a ball carrier. A monster scrummager. A hitman in the tackle. He had all the right physical qualities too – 6’1″/118KG at 18 – and they are rare enough with the athleticism he also displayed.
If all that scaled up to pro-level? That’s a serious prop. You can see why Munster made that move to bring a guy like that into the academy straight out of school. Why spend €400k+ to sign a guy like Vincent Koch with half a dozen other top clubs competing for him when you can, essentially, build a guy with all of Vincent Koch’s qualities from the ground up, all while making them Irish qualified in the process?
But that doesn’t happen overnight. It doesn’t even happen in a season or two. No, when you sign a guy like Keynan Knox at 18, you have to commit to a long-term process to get him to the point where he becomes a regular option at URC level before showing what he can do as an elite talent and that’s when everything runs smoothly with injury, college (which is a big focus for Munster) and the player’s personal life. Throw in a global pandemic for two years and things can get unpredictable but my key message here is patience. Munster knew they had a five-star recruit, so to speak, so the key was to get him to a stage where he could produce that. The club showed us that early on with a 1+2 contract while he was still in the second year of the academy. Essentially, he was offered (and signed) a three-year deal structured so that he had one further year in the academy baked in but with two senior years straight after. These are rare enough to be notable, for props especially.
In the last few years, one or two freak outliers have radically altered the timeline for what it means to be “ready” for top-level rugby as a prop. Andrew Porter and Taniela Tupou – two of the freakiest freaks that ever freaked – are a good example of expanded expectations. Both made their test debut as tightheads in 2017 aged 21. Now, they were used primarily as tighthead replacements initially but that is still seriously impressive, hard to duplicate work.
But not everyone can get on that expedited timeline and assuming that they should is a mistake. Test rugby is tougher and more physical than it’s ever been (and that revises upwards each year) so not every player, especially not every prop, is going to be ready to deal with the grind and attrition that comes with that change in scale. There aren’t any shortcuts to that level that you can take either. Well, that’s not true – there are – but you get two or four-year bans for those, usually. You either have that physicality or you don’t. The odd freak has it early (20/21/22) but it’s not unusual for players who end up being world-class props to make the step up by 24/25 years of age.
Keynan Knox will turn 24 in April 2023. Vincent Koch, a player I think Knox maps really well with physically and from a role perspective, made his breakthrough to test level at 25. I think Knox is capable of the same but, to stay on track with that, he needs to make his breakthrough as a starter for Munster this upcoming season, in my opinion.
Why didn’t Knox make that breakthrough this season? I would say firstly that he’s still quite young and, to an extent, was always going to be minded to a certain level but you’ve also got to take into account a few niggling injuries that stole key games from him and the dreaded Omicron Incident in South Africa stopped a lot of his momentum – along with a lot of the rest of the team. He made two starts and eight replacement appearances. He started the season really strongly against the Sharks and the Stormers but a badly timed hip injury disrupted his run, meaning he missed out on a formative game against the Scarlets. He returned for a bench appearance against the Ospreys and then missed the next two months pretty much due to covid.
He flitted in and out of the team over the next few months due to rotation, a few niggles and bigger games rolling around where the senior props were prioritised. Knox had an opportunity to set his stall out for those games but he missed key moments earlier in the season where he could have booked his spot.
With another year of pro-conditioning, a good preseason and a bit of luck, I think he can make up for lost time but he has to start strong and start fast.
This time last year I wrote that;
On the tighthead side, the equation is pretty simple. All four senior tightheads are off contract at the end of next season and Munster will be expecting the young pair of Keynan Knox and Roman Salanoa to ascend to CORE 1 status over the next 12 months. They will need a bit of luck with injury – Salanoa in particular – but I’ve seen enough from both players to suggest they have the capacity to ascend to the level required of a modern-day tighthead duo over the next season with support from the veteran pair of Stephen Archer and John Ryan.
That did not happen as planned. Knox wasn’t able to step up to CORE 1 status but he was able to sign a new two-year deal off the back of what he might become this upcoming season. Salanoa wasn’t either because, as I wrote, he had a bit of luck with injury, the only problem was that all of it was bad luck.
Salanoa’s season was a season of niggles, one after the next, that limited him to just 50 minutes during 2021/22. It got to the point that when he signed a new three-year deal mid-season, a lot of people in my mentions were quite surprised that he was still at the club. So why was he re-signed on such a rarely given contract term?
Because guys with Salanoa’s size and power do not come along every day. Not even every week. Nope, Salanoa is a once every five years power-freak who just needs to settle into his rugby physique to make himself incredibly valuable, incredibly soon. Salanoa is 6’0″, well over 120kg and is basically a wardrobe with eyes. He’s explosive, he’s heavy and he’s the perfect 20-minute nuke to come off the bench against a tiring opposition. Elements of Salanoa’s game are going to be raw as hell still. He’s been blighted by injuries so he isn’t getting a tonne of match experience – he got his latest injury playing Division 1B for Shannon in the AIL – but that power on both sides of the ball and in the scrum is a tantalizing prospect. His biggest push this season is on durability and showing that he can be a 20-minute player in the URC over consecutive rounds. If he can then build on that, there’s serious potential here.
It is not an understatement to suggest that Munster really needs one, or ideally, both of these players to make that step up this season. Their injury status will be the biggest hurdle to that as it was last season, especially in the early going.
Last season, Stephen Archer and John Ryan closed out the big games post-Omicron-Incident as the starting and finishing pair. When we started with Archer, we were prioritising maul offence and defence, lineout smarts, tighter carrying and close in defence. When we finished with Ryan, we were looking to max out on offensive scrummaging and mobile ball carrying. It was effective and it was predictable. From a coach’s perspective, I think both players offered you fairly consistent positives and negatives that you could live with. They knew that, at times, Archer could get overwhelmed in the scrum by an aggressive, big loosehead. They also knew that Ryan sometimes took away from our tighter ball carrying and defence. But they both gave very predictable upsides too. In combination, they were a good 80-minute combination that wouldn’t put the fear of God into an opposition front row but they could navigate you through most games against most opposition.
I hypothisied last season that only one of Archer and Ryan would be kept on.
If all goes to plan [with Knox and Salanoa’s ascension] I would suggest there is room for a one or two-year veteran deal for either John Ryan or Stephen Archer – I’d pick Ryan right now, personally, as I think he’s the better scrummager – to cover the position post-2022 with Munster looking to recruit a tighthead (or two) into the academy in the position over the next two seasons.
That also did not happen. Well, kinda. In the budget squeeze that Munster – and all the other provinces – were experiencing post-pandemic, the cheaper deal was keeping Archer on for another year. John Ryan is an excellent player but, as evidenced by his two-year deal at Wasps, that was the kind of deal he deserved and we really couldn’t offer that stability that a family man needs. One-year deals are fine in certain scenarios but if you sign one in December, you’re looking for your next contract to be sorted by October of the next year. That’s a stressful place to be.
Stephen Archer – who I would expect to finish up at the end of this season – was the smarter choice in the scenario presented to Munster which was (a) you need to cut your budget and (b) you need to develop those young tightheads in a hurry.
Knox and Salanoa have the security of two and three-year deals now, so they have to make that step up this season. I’ve often been asked why Munster didn’t sign a tighthead this off-season and I would point to (a) and (b) in the previous paragraph as being the core reasons. That isn’t a fixed value, however. If Knox and Salanoa don’t make that step up this season, it might encourage Munster to list them as more medium-term, lower potential options and sign in someone post-World Cup to run the position from mid-2024 on. There is more pressure on Knox to make that move, in my opinion, because he’s on the shorter deal. I hope he can do it because I believe there’s a world-class operator in there waiting to get out.
Another wild card in the position is James French, who had the most impressive seasonal performance of all the young tightheads, in my opinion. Sure, he ran into bother in the scrum against Wasps in Coventry, but his work around the field that day was exactly of what you want from a modern prop. He won collisions, he battered the breakdown, he handled well – he was really good.
Then he got injured and ended the season with another bunch of knocks that included a middle-grade knee injury.
That’s been the story of French’s young career up until now but he impressed Munster to the point that he was offered a two-year senior contract. Now French can cover loosehead so we’ll see if there’s some positional versatility to his usage next season but, if he can stay fit and get training week to week to week, he could well upset the apple cart when it comes to positional hierarchy in the next season. At 6’0″ and 120kg, French has all the physical traits needed to be a serious option but he just needs to stay fit.
That term – just needing to stay fit – is the biggest work on for all three of our young senior tightheads without question.
Priority 1: Important player to be replaced by the end of the season.
Priority 2: Important player to be replaced within two seasons
Priority 3: Important player to be replaced within three seasons
Core 1: Important first-choice player that likely has at least four seasons of peak performance remaining.
Squad 2: Squad player in peak age that likely has four+ seasons of high performance in a down-the-chart position.
Foundation Player: Young talent (20-24) expected to play for five + seasons and transition to Core 1.
Potential Foundation: Talent ID’d young player (18-23) that has the potential to ascend to regular first-team exposure as a Core 1 or Squad 2 type player.
Assess 1: A player that will need to be assessed for role suitability and depth chart position across the upcoming season with a view to their future usage or contract.
| Player Position | Age Jan 1 2023 | Grade | Contract Year? | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stephen Archer | THP | 34 | PRIORITY 1 | YES |
| Keynan Knox | THP | 23 | FOUNDATION | NO |
| Roman Salanoa | THP | 25 | POTENTIAL FOUNDATION | NO |
| James French | THP | 24 | POTENTIAL FOUNDATION | NO |
| Darragh McSweeney (A) | THP | 20 | POTENTIAL FOUNDATION | YES |
I still have Keynan Knox listed as a Foundational player despite failing to fire as a core component of the Big Game team last season. I think he has all the ingredients needed to be a complete option in the front row as a power carrier, a heavy mauler and a rock solid, aggressive scrummager.
All the rest are potential foundation-level guys for me but we can’t separate the reality of the national context from this process either. When John Ryan left for Wasps, it meant Munster had no tighthead in and around the Irish test bubble. Ryan last player for Ireland last summer and, to be fair, he didn’t feature at all last season but he was still in that conversation, however down the chart he might have been.
As of now, Munster have no tighthead in the conversation for 2023 unless one of the younger guys makes a breakthrough this season ahead of the World Cup. If none of them can manage it through injury or underperformance, they will make a case for Graham Rowntree to look to the medium term by spending some money on the NIQ market for 2023/24 when the test tightheads that aren’t going to the World Cup will be available or the guys off contract after the World Cup are looking for a landing spot.
If Rowntree does go looking for a medium-term option, it will be with a view to scaling up the Academy’s Darragh McSweeney, the colossal Cork tighthead. At 6’3″ and 130KG+, McSweeney offers the kind of size and heft we haven’t had at Munster since the days of Hayes and Buckley and while he is still a bit raw, for sure, he’s got the power to make an impact earlier than we might think.
It’ll be an interesting season for the heavies, that’s for sure.
Coming Up Next – Rebuilding The Big Red Machine Part 2.5 – Looseheads and Hookers
