New Zealand recruit has settled in very well at Munster
Anthony Foley stood by him when he arrived in Limerick injured, so Tyler Bleyendaal stands by Munster
TYLER BLEYENDAAL closed the circle the other week, heading home to Christchurch for the first time since he moved to Limerick. He arrived back in January 2015, injured and without a clue what he was letting himself in for. ‘Awfully dark, quite a horrible winter that one,’ he says, remembering an awkward settling-in period on the sidelines.
Better that, though, then what he and fiancée Laura encountered back in the earthquake-hit hometown which still hasn’t fully recovered from the devastating events of February 2011.
‘There’s been a little bit of progress, more restaurants, that sort of stuff. The city centre’s still not quite there yet. A lot of red tape before the whole thing comes together. They’ve demolished it and there’s a lot of roads still closed and they’re not really rebuilding it where it was, so there is a bit of restructuring happening.’
Having grown up about five minutes from the city centre, Bleyendaal was steeped in the Christchurch way of life. There was national championship schools cricket success. Sisters Nikki and Anna’s theatre pursuits. Volleyball, too, as his parents Roger and Karen − who were in Paris for the called-off Racing match − both played for New Zealand, his dad later coaching the women’s national side.
But nothing compared to rugby and his Crusaders ties still bind, Bleyendaal popping along while at home to catch up with old coaches and teammates and also keep his own training ticking over.
The 2010 Under 20 World Cup-winning Baby Blacks skipper has never regretted leaving. Munster had nibbled before, enquiring could he come in late 2011 on a short-term deal to tide them over while Ronan O’Gara was at the World Cup. Injury scuppered that approach but when interest was revived three years later, and Crusaders suffering a bottleneck of No10 riches, a deal was done.
‘They were looking for me to stay. We’d a good relationship but I probably would have had another year of doing not much behind Tom Taylor, Colin Slade, Dan Carter. They have all left now as it turned out but I’ve no regrets. I’m happy with the decision. There’s a big wide world out there.
‘The dream was always to play for the All Blacks but professional rugby has moved on a lot. I’d to park that dream but I got a chance to experience the complete opposite side of the world, play a different style of rugby, new competitions, meet new people and travel.’
The softly-spoken 26-year-old describes Munster as ‘the perfect fit’, so good he recently extended his deal through to 2019 on the basis they are ‘heading in a really good direction’.
They stood by him in his time of need. In September 2014 Anthony Foley was adamant that players weren’t pieces of meat, that there would be nothing but support for the then-still-to-arrive signing who had just suffered a serious neck injury.
‘Very pleasing and reassuring,’ says Bleyendaal, reflecting on that show of faith. ‘We were all aware it was going to be a long-term thing, that I wasn’t coming for one season. I was going to get established and was committing to Munster. He saw and understood that. He was very encouraging.’
Two years on, Bleyendaal is steadfastly standing by Munster, the misery of the lengthy quad injury that followed his neck rehab giving way to an on-pitch flourish that commenced with that inspired try just minutes into the Glasgow match the day after Foley was laid to rest last October. ‘It was a very sombre, very unique situation. We weren’t sure how we were going to be affected or perform. It was an incredibly tough week. Just being able to contribute was unbelievable. Everyone was on a mission that day, so we got stuck in. It was lovely to get that try to start it off.’
He liked Anthony Foley. ‘He was very supportive. Maybe we didn’t always agree on the way things should be done but we chucked ideas back and forth, tried to get the best solution for the team. He had a good rugby brain and put a lot of ideas out there. It was a pleasure to work with him. What he was trying to instil here is now SUPPORT: being lived and we have really progressed… I’m happy we have started to play as he hoped.’ Twenty starts Bleyendaal has pitched in with this term, a far cry from just three in his injury-ruined first season and a half. ‘I never lost hope. I knew it was a time thing. A lot of players go through bad runs with injury – it was just my turn. Luckily, we lived through it. ‘It was down to the kicking, which is paramount to the position,’ he says, explaining why his quad kept breaking down. ‘I was quite ablebodied otherwise – even running I was quite able, but kicking was slowing things down. It was frustrating, just not knowing where the endpoint was at times.’ Now restored to rude health, Bleyendaal is a talisman as Munster roll back the years, reaching the last eight in Europe for the first time since 2014 and being consistent all year in the league. Not that he has the cachet of an O’Gara just yet. A surname marking his Dutch heritage still has him asked occasionally if he is from South Africa while insistence on wearing a scrum cap on the pitch and a baseball cap off doesn’t give him greater recognisability either.
‘It’s very hard to explain,’ he shrugs, elaborating on the transformation of the club he lives around the corner from in Castletroy with Laura, a qualified nurse who now works in a gym. Sometimes you just have a bad run. Maybe there was a transition from a lot of experience to a lot of youth. If you look back five years the squad was incredibly experienced with a lot of caps and maybe we have half that now. A lot of leaders have left but we have developed new leaders.
‘We are getting more confident with each other in the way we are trying to do things. That was what we were driving on earlier in the season, to back yourself, to have a go and to do it together… the HPC has really helped, really helped centralise everything. Previously, with all the experience, maybe it wasn’t such an issue, but we are really enjoying being together, training from the one centre.
‘I’m not sure why the progress was made. We just went out and attacked every game as best we could and we definitely took some momentum after that initial Glasgow match. We ran on raw emotion for eight or nine weeks and it was probably running out come that last Racing game. A week off came at the right time.
‘To qualify and get the home quarter-final was huge. Something we’re very proud of. To play Toulouse, there’s a lot of history. We’re aware of the challenges coming but at the same time we’re excited. We know it’s not just another game, but we have to treat it as another game that’s going to be massively physical and tough with a lot at stake.’