Irish Daily Star - Inside Sport
BOK TO THE FUTURE FOR JENKINS
SHARKS MOVE WILL PUT JENKINS BACK IN FRAME
THIS is Jason Jenkins third season in Ireland, his rst with Munster was followed by a switch to Leinster in the summer of 2022.
There were few sightings of second-row Jenkins in the red jersey where despite RG Snyman’s difficulties, his playing time was restricted to two starts, both of which featured him being taken in before the hour, and a further 10 appearances from the bench.
His CV shows he played a total of 267 minutes in the Munster jersey, that’s threeand-a-third games all told that’s not a lot.
Consequently there were eyebrows raised when Leinster took an interest in ostensibly a downtable reserve although a look through the games Jenkins played may provide a clue; one of the two matches Jenkins started was a late in the season home win over the Blues.
Welcomed to Dublin, Jenkins started eight of their rst ten 2022/23 games and when it came to the business end of the season was a replacement in all four of the Champions Cup games in the run to the nal.
There has been a similar pattern this year and Leinster fans maybe got an inkling of what the second-row’s ceiling might be last weekend - his hour against La Rochelle was pure heavy metal.
Yes, he left the eld after 60 minutes but he nished with
MAKING MOVES: Leinster’s Jason Jenkins has big aspirations with South Africa following his spells with Munster and then the Blues before he returns to his homeland to turn out for Sharks later this year the team’s best defensive stats and close to attacking stats in the pack.
Former Springbok secondrow Victor Mat eld, a legend in his own time, says Jenkins is being brought home to play for Sharks for a reason. He will be brought into the wider squad either this summer or in November.
This plays into the idea Rassie Erasmus has had his eye on Jenkins for some time.
Succession
As having called up Jenkins, at the prompting of Felix Jones it turns out, to the South Africa squad when they were in Ireland in November 2022, he liked what he saw - and felt that with Eben Etzebeth closing in on retirement it was time to put a succession plan in place.
He may be a rst-choice Springbok RWC2027 second-row. Wow!
Jenkins has already been Munster’s’big Yellow Taxi’ (as in Joni Mitchell’s song) and he may yet prove the Leinster fans BYT too: ‘Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you got
‘til it’s gone...’
“Yes,” says the 28 yearold, “it is most de nitely still a dream for me to play for the Springboks and that’s why the opportunity to go to the Sharks next season is right for me.
“I’d hoped that the move to Leinster would help me with representing South Africa.
“I mean, it was a couple of weeks that I was here at the club, two months or so, and then I was already in the squad when South Africa toured Ireland.
“Club rugby with Leinster has been exciting for me, getting picked and getting involved and one of the reasons why I came here was you want to be at a club that sets the bar.”
But a Springbok RWC 2027 second-row? Mat eld has more; he says Jenkins should have been an RWC 2023 second-row on the back of his rst season at Leinster.
“When I retired the rst time I coached Jason and RG Snyman as 19 year-old boys and I must say I was very impressed.
“I actually thought he would be in the 2023 Springboks Rugby World Cup squad and I was very surprised he didn’t make it.
“He only started playing rugby as a 16 year-old and just the skillset, the work rate, he is a big strong boy that likes to get on the front foot. He is coming back to South Africa and will go into a good Stormers team so we will see him in the Springbok jersey very soon.
“I’d see him as the guy who will take over from Eben Etzebeth, that hard-working tough guy who is in your face all the time.
“So getting back to that connection with Snyman, there could be an added advantage of using
them together, they are very good mates and they played together as rst-choice locks at Bulls around 2017 to 2019 and worked well together.”
This, of course, makes Leinster’s South African current two-game sojourn all the more interesting for Jenkins.
Auditions
It is great to be in the shop window playing Champions Cup and having made the semi
nal to date, great to be topping the URC table.
But games in Johannesburg today (v Lions at the 62,567 Ellis Park where the 2010 FIFA World Cup nal was played) and Cape Town (v Stormers at the 51,900 Newlands Stadium) next Saturday are surely auditions for bigger things.
“One of the reasons why I came to Leinster was, as a player, you want to win trophies and I was very fortunate to get the two year deal when I did,” Jenkins says.
“I think, currently, we have about 18 guys in the Ireland squad so for me it is a massive honour and a massive learning curve in my career being able to play among players like that to be coached by the coaching staff we have, incredible.
“I’ve been grateful to Leinster and hopefully we can get some wins in these big games in South Africa, then that we can
nish off the rest of the season on a high, that’s the main focus for now.”
URC form though suggests two Leinster wins on this minitour would be quite an achievement.
Each of the four SA clubs have been difficult to beat on their own turf and, indeed, Lions have not lost in Johannesburg to a visiting European side this season while Stormers have not in Cape Town to any opposition.
Tonic
It is one of the reasons South Africa’s decision to join the URC was such a tonic for the league and for, says Jenkins, for the country’s rugby.
“Without a doubt, it’s given extra, there is an exciting edge to it. I don’t know what the viewpoint would be from the Irish fans or European fans but I think it’s been really exciting back home.
“You see the big stadiums lling up again, obviously not for every single game but every now and then with the big games, they managed to ll up the big stadiums. I think that’s what you want to do, to engage the fans and make them a part of it.”
Jenkins will also take in his two ‘other’ club’s clash today, try and get to see some of the Bulls-munster match-up at the iconic Loftus Versfeld, 1,350m above sea-level.
“It’s no exaggeration, it’s tough,” he says of playing at such an altitude.
“That’s actually where I grew up, I played the rst ve years of my career at the Bulls and when you train there and you play there you actually don’t realise how tough it is.
“It is after you’ve left and then come back to play you realise how hard it is because you are struggling for breath almost immediately.
“I played all those years for the Bulls and was conditioned for it and you go away for a year and you come back to the Loftus and all that is gone!”