Jean Kleyn reckons it’s been almost two years – to be precise the week in May 2023 when Munster won the BKT URC Grand Final against the Stormers in Cape Town – since he was last on media duty for his province. And this week he was never happier to be at in again.
“I’m telling you man, it’s much easier being healthy than ill or injured!” So, what’s he been up to? “A little bit of this and a little bit of that. I took up carpentry,” he joked.
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Aside from the carpentry, after winning the URC with Munster, and having been discarded by Ireland, Kleyn was brought into the Springboks fold and won a World Cup.
Then came his recovery from a rare eye disorder that threatened his career, a neck injury and a torn quad that sidelined him since last October before he returned for the win over Connacht in Mayo last Saturday. That was just in time for this Saturday’s intriguing rendezvous with La Rochelle in the Stade Deflandre (kick-off 6.30pm local time/5.30pm Irish).
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“I think these things are cyclical man. I honestly believe that’s just the way rugby works,” says eminently likable 31-year-old lock.
Kleyn admits he thought, after injuring his neck in 2019, “I don’t even know if this is worth it any more”. Ditto with his eye condition. But his troubles have made him appreciate his career more.
“I was saying to the boys last week that it was the first week in months I was enjoying being a rugby player, because when you’re injured it’s just terrible. You’re still training in and out, you’re in the meetings, you’re participating but you’re not really part of it,” he says.
“Being part of it again, you realise we’re so blessed to be playing a sport we grew up playing as kids for fun as a profession. It’s incredible. What a privilege. Injuries give a lot of perspective. You learn that as you progress throughout your career.”
The rumours that the eye condition was threatening his career weren’t without foundation.
“Well, cat out of the bag, [it was] a fourth cranial nerve palsy,” he reveals. He says it was quickly diagnosed by the Munster doctor Jamie Kearns and was probably caused by the back of his head hitting the ground in a game.
“Essentially, I paralysed a nerve that pulled my right eye down when I looked left. So, every time that I looked past neutral, the picture would split, and the farther I looked left, the worse it got.
“Now, in fairness, I got back to the point where I was training fully and I’d made peace with the fact that ‘if this doesn’t come right I’m going to keep going through it. I’m going to keep playing and I’m going to learn to adapt’.
“I don’t think it would have been very easy, but I got to the point where I was in full training and things were going fairly well but we just decided to get the op and fix it.”
The operation is mostly performed on children.
“It’s called squint surgery. It’s to correct a squint, which is usually something that you’re born with.
“When I had the surgery it was fairly brutal but within a week I was starting to see massive improvement, and three weeks later I played.
“It’s a minorly invasive procedure as well. The doctor who performed it, a South African doctor called Jill de Villiers. She was phenomenal, very good to work with.”
The estimated recovery time for his latest lay-off was supposed to take him to a week after the Champions Cup Round of 16, the date of which he underlined when Munster landed La Rochelle.
“It’s why you play the game, isn’t it?” Kleyn said last Tuesday in Munster’s high-performance centre. “I said to Pete [O’Mahony] after training today, it feels like the way the European Cup used to feel. In 2017/18, the European Cup was the thing. There was this fervour surrounding it. And that’s what it felt like today at training. Everyone was just up and raring to go. It makes such a difference.
“You can feel the excitement, you can feel the tension building in European Cup weeks, and it’s been a while since I felt that, so it was really nice.
“I am really looking forward to this weekend. I think everyone is; the first time that Munster and La Rochelle have ever met in the European Cup. And what an occasion, Round of 16, over in La Rochelle, I think every Munster fan that could possibly get their hands on a ticket has already gone.
“When we qualified, I got 10 or 15 messages off random people on Instagram. ‘So we have already bought the plane tickets, any chance you can sort us out with some game tickets?‘. People are just desperate to get to it.
“I think it’s going to be class. It’s going to be some fixture.”
