My grandmother whispered something into my ear one day when I was very young that I’ve never forgotten.
“You can never have enough second rows in your squad build. They are your team’s personality; more often than not they are the difference between success and failure by their quality or lack thereof in 2024, twenty-eight years from now”.
She was wise.
Sure, she also told me that I had a lovely head of dark brown hair that I was sure never to lose, so she wasn’t right about everything but she was oddly specific about the state of the game of rugby union.
I know that 2023/24 is far from over but when you get to May I can’t help but turn my eyes towards the upcoming pre-season and the campaign that follows. In this article series – which will end with the Munster Academy intake for 2024/25 – I will look at the Munster depth chart in detail to assess the health of each position and unit as we head into Rowntree’s third full season in charge.
My first area of interest is our locks because it’s the position we’re losing the most quality from while also being the one where we have some of our most exciting young talent.
On the departures side of things, there’s no escaping the gap that RG Snyman leaves this unit, on paper at least.
His availability in the games that matter has been atrocious over the last four years; RG has played 63 minutes of knockout rugby, 48 minutes of Champions Cup rugby and just seven minutes against interprovincial opponents in four seasons to date. As with everything Snyman related, however, it’s the tantalising potential of what he could be that’s the big miss. We’ve seen it in fits and starts over the last two seasons – mainly for South Africa – but the idea of losing that guy, as rarely seen as he’s been, 100% takes something from our top-level next year without question. Snyman is both a hypothetical and a reality, but next season we’ll be planning without him which, to be fair, we’ve been doing since the pandemic.
So what are we planning for?
First, let’s get our glossary in place;
- CORE 1: A vitally important player who will start most games or play an important role in them.
- CORE 2: An important senior player who will likely make squads as a starter or replacement in elite games.
- SQUAD 1: A player who can slot in for one of the CORE 1/2 players if they are injured and can be a match day 23 player for lower tier games as a starter or replacement.
- SQUAD 2: A player who is an intermittent option in the match day 23 regardless of opposition.
- FOUNDATION 1: A young player – under 25 – who can become a CORE 1 player.
- FOUNDATION 2: A player expected to top out around CORE 2 or SQUAD 1 level.
- PRIORITY 1/2/3: A player who needs to be cycled out inside one year (most pressing), two years (wiggle room) and three years (ageing but not a pressing matter)
| Player | Role | Age on Jan 31 2025 | Contract Expiry | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jean Kleyn | Heavy Tighthead Lock | 31 | 2026 | CORE 1/REPLACE 2 |
| Tadhg Beirne | Swing Lock | 33 | 2025 | CORE 1/REPLACE 2 |
| Edwin Edogbo | Tighthead Lock Power Forward | 22 | 2026 | FOUNDATION 1 |
| Tom Ahern | Offensive Stretch Power Forward | 24 | 2025 | FOUNDATION 1 |
| Fineen Wycherley | Tighthead Lock | 27 | 2025 | SQUAD 2 |
| Evan O'Connell | Heavy Swing Lock | 20 | ACAD | FOUNDATION 1 |
From a developmental perspective – and before any subsequent academy players are added in – we look to have a very bright core of players as far as the mid-to-long term is concerned in key, complimentary rolesets.
In Edwin Edogbo, Tom Ahern and Evan O’Connell I believe we have three Foundational talents that, crucially, we can play all at the same time once they develop. Ahern is the most ready of the three, after a breakout season where, if all goes well, he should find himself capped by the end of the calendar year at the latest. Ahern can slot into our #4 and #6 with very little shift in his key roleset. Wherever he plays he’ll have a huge lineout output on both sides of the throw while being a key offensive piece of our wider attacking structure.
In the mid-term, I see Ahern’s biggest impact coming in the #6 jersey because of what it will, hopefully, allow us to do in the front five as a whole. With Ahern’s lineout dominance, it gives us a little wiggle room with who we stack at #4, #5 and #19 in the long term. I think Ahern is a generational talent that can help bring through our new generation locks in his wake.
The key to the younger duo – Ireland u20 captain O’Connell and Edogbo – developing as we hope is the ability to put them alongside complimentary rolesets where neither player gets overwhelmed or overworked too early in their development. This isn’t just related to their partners in the second row, either, this relates to the entire pack build around them but it can’t be overstated how important the recovery of Jean Kleyn from injury is to both O’Connell and Edogbo.
World Cup-winning Springbok tighthead locks do not grow on trees. They don’t even grow on trees in South Africa, the one place where you might realistically expect a Tighthead Lock Tree to grow. When Jean Kleyn was added to the Springbok squad last summer, it wasn’t because he knew the Irish lineout calls from four years earlier, or as a “mind game”. It was because he has a very rare skillset in the modern game in that he’s a true Heavy Tighthead Lock. Erasmus wanted him in place as a core role twin for Eben Etzebeth. Kleyn isn’t as quick or as heavy in the carry as Etzebeth is but he brings the same world-class scrummaging on the tighthead side with top-end offensive and defence maul work, close-in defence and heavy breakdown work.
Having Jean Kleyn as a starter alongside either Edogbo or O’Connell with Ahern at the #6 gives both of those younger locks the perfect partner to compliment their game without overloading either, as well as forming a class duo with Beirne at the top end of our chart. We can’t escape the fact, however, that Jean Kleyn is now NIQ and on a two-year contract that we are unlikely to be able to renew.
Edogbo would seem like the natural successor to Kleyn from both a size and role profile. Edogbo is currently listed as 6’5″ and 120kg but I wouldn’t be at all shocked if he togs out at 6’6″+ and 125/130kg by the time he hits 25. The height isn’t important here, so much as his playing weight and physical impact are.
He’s already shown that he’s got the scrummaging chops, maul work, carrying and offensive ruck work to be a top-class player – the only issue is whether he can put a full season together from a fitness perspective. His last two seasons have ended early due to serious lower leg injuries and while that isn’t a massive indicator of future issues – look at Ahern playing more rugby this season than he has in the previous four seasons combined – it does suggest that he’ll be best served in bigger packs in a supporting role until he fully grows into his enormous frame.
Evan O’Connell, a heavy swing lock with heavy tighthead lock potential, needs a big summer of conditioning to pack on size, but when he does he’ll be a guy that could see a lot of minutes next season.
The parallels to James Ryan are somewhat inevitable given the roles they played for Ireland u20 (captain, lineout caller, physical focal point in attack and defence) and who his uncle is, but Evan O’Connell is his own man. I remember watching him playing for Castletroy College two years ago and he looked like the most polished lock I’d ever seen playing school rugby at that level. His detail in the lineout, his physicality, and his size all pointed to a serious prospect.
From a physical perspective, O’Connell looks roughly on par with James Ryan after his first year at the Leinster Academy. James Ryan ended up getting capped for Ireland that summer and played in the November internationals and Six Nations the season after and, to be clear, I don’t see that happening with O’Connell in the same time frame.
But I think O’Connell might be more ready for considerable URC minutes than it might seem; he’s 6’7 and 109kg as of this February. Another 5/6kg and I think he’ll be ready for the start of next season. O’Connell has played on and off for UL Bohemian in 2A for the last two seasons with some Munster A and u20 action but Munster have been very particular in not throwing him into URC action, even when we were down to zero fit locks. There were points where we had to list him in matchday squads but we still refused to give him minutes.
Why?
Because he wasn’t ready physically and we know, from experience, what happens when you throw in young locks too early. In the last two seasons in the academy, O’Connell has been hitting the gym like a hurricane to scale himself up physically. We’ve seen the results in this year’s u20 Six Nations when he looked the physical equal of his peers, a lot of whom already had multiple professional caps under their belts.
If that trend continues, there’s a top-class Heavy Swing Lock there. What’s a Swing Lock? It’s a player that gives you high carry volume in the middle of the field, high tackle output, high offensive and defensive breakdown numbers and high usage in the lineout on both sides of the ball. Tadhg Beirne without the freakish jackal threat, essentially, and James Ryan before he stacked on too much weight. That’s where I think O’Connell fits best. If Edogbo comes through as a Tighthead Lock Power Forward build player – or even just a Heavy Tighthead Lock – it would give us a perfectly tailored partnership for the long term with Ahern rounding out a potentially generational back-five rotation.
Fineen Wycherley will be an important player next season also but finds himself with a decision to make as he heads into his late 20s – knowing what he’ll know about Ahern, O’Connell and Edogbo, does he stick around beyond the end of next season? He’s added some great size in the last 12 months and, even though that seems to have coincided with some niggly injuries, it puts him in a spot where he can add real value as a starting or finishing component in that Tighthead Lock role set. 
No, he’s not the same calibre of Tighthead Lock as Jean Kleyn is but he offers similar qualities that you can work with as you navigate through the season. You could easily pair him with Evan O’Connell, for example, in a Category B or C game in the URC or have him coming off the bench for Edwin Edogbo if you wanted to rest Jean Kleyn.
He’s experienced, he’s aggressive, he can call a lineout and he’s got the size now to be a capable tight carrier in the middle of the field. His consistency is an issue, and I don’t see him adding to his Ireland cap at this stage of his career but if he can stay fit at his current size he’ll be a valuable component of our wider tight five group next season. What he does after that with a contract decision looming – for both him and Munster – remains to be seen.
That all brings us to the best Swing Lock in the game; Tadhg Gerard Beirne.
There are two types of people in this world. People who know that Tadhg Beirne is one of the best players in the world right now, and wrong people. No other second row can do everything that Beirne can, as good as he can and as often as he does it on the biggest stage.
In the last few years at test level when James Ryan’s performance levels have plateaued and Iain Henderson has started to succumb to more and more injuries, Tadhg Beirne has been the one constant gold standard performer as Ireland became the #1 team in the world.
How do you replace a guy like that? Easy answer; you don’t. But midway through next season, Beirne will turn 33 and face a negotiation with a new performance director on a central contract. He’s more than deserving of that contract – and a two-year extension – but we have no idea how David Humphreys will view these negotiations with a veteran player.
Outside of that discussion, Munster will have to start looking at replacing Beirne in the mid-term, likely on the same time scale as Jean Kleyn just to be safe. I feel that Beirne has a good bit of time left on the clock – he could easily stay at or near his current levels up to 35/36 – but that’s almost impossible to predict with any certainty.
He’s a guaranteed starter in our Category A team and he’s someone who could pair really with Edogbo in lower-level games. O’Connell could also pair well with him if you wanted to strip back O’Connell’s role in his first few games next season; essentially let Beirne do what he does (everything) and let O’Connell carry the remaining load.
You could make a case that Munster could and maybe should add another senior power profile lock in the next 12/18 months to help take some of the pressure off Edogbo and O’Connell in the short term while also lessening the impending minute load on Jean Kleyn.
On the one hand, Evan O’Connell and Edwin Edogbo could both have James Ryan/Caelan Doris tier breakout seasons next year but, on the other, should we rely on that? Is that fair on either young man, both of whom are in their very early twenties?
I felt that someone like Ultan Dillane or Gavin Thornbury might be a good pick-up for a year or two to help smooth the load but we’ll have to see what business Munster finish up with this season.
Up Next?
