BOK TO THE FUTURE FOR JENKINS
SHARKS MOVE WILL PUT JENKINS BACK IN FRAME
THIS is Jason Jenkins third season in Ireland, his first 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.
TRY AS HE MIGHT: Jason Jenkins during his Bulls days, scoring in the Super Rugby match between Vodacom Bulls and Southern Kings at Loftus Versfeld
Welcomed to Dublin, Jenkins started eight of their first 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 final.
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 field after 60 minutes but he finished with the team’s best defensive stats and close to attacking stats in the pack.
Former Springbok secondrow Victor Matfield, 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 first-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 definitely 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? Matfield has more; he says Jenkins should have been an RWC 2023 second-row on the back of his first season at Leinster.
“When I retired the first 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