De Villiers facing fixture wrangle
Munster manager, Shaun Payne, yesterday indicated that the Springbok centre can link up with his international colleagues for November’s autumn Tests should South African head coach Pieter de Villiers require the services of the 2008 South African Player of the Year.
The possibility of Jean de Villiers playing with the Boks is likely to have ramifications for Munster as he’ll miss a chunk of the coming season if on international duty.
However, coach De Villiers has indicated that he’d prefer to pick South African-based players for his end-of-season tour and for the 2010 Tri-Nations Series.
Pressure, though, will certainly mount on the controversial head coach should he adopt this policy for 2009 and 2010 as that would rule out Francois Steyn, who joined Racing Metro, and possibly Bryan Habana, who is mulling over a move to the Top 14.
Asked whether Jean de Villiers will be eligible for South Africa upon his arrival in Munster, Payne said: “Yes he will, but the other de Villiers (Pieter) has indicated he won’t pick anyone who’s not based in South Africa. There’s a grey area there and always has been in the past. Obviously there are stories about Francois Steyn who joined Top 14 side Racing Metro. It’ll be interesting to see what happens because it will have a bearing on us as well.”
Munster’s new signing, who signed a one-year deal with the possibility of staying for a further two, is requesting an early release from his employers Western Province who hold his contract until October 31, 2009.
“There’s no problem Jean being released from his South African contract,” added Payne. “Once he’s released from Western Province he can join us straight away. He needs to be registered for Heineken Cup by September 17 though.”
Payne also believes his fellow South African will settle in quickly at his new home. “I’ve known Jean quite a while. I’ve had a couple of chats to him over the last couple of years, and I think he’s the perfect fit for us. He’s down to earth and lives for his rugby. He’s a really sociable guy as well. Very friendly.
“I came into the Munster set-up and to be honest with you, it’s hard not to fit in. It’s just so easy to buy into it when everyone is working towards a goal like these guys do and are so serious about their rugby. I get the feeling he’ll be a hit here.”
Meanwhile, goal-setting for the coming season will form part of Munster’s week-long camp in Vilamoura, Portugal when they touch down at the Browns Sport and Leisure Club today.
“Our Lions will be going until Sunday,” said Payne, “just so we can give them a full week’s training next week. This is their first week back in training so it’s slightly disruptive in terms of us travelling midweek. They’ve had their four-week holiday but we want to have as little disruption as possible because they’re in so late. There’s a need for us to all get together and a need for them (Lions) to have a decent pre-season as well.
“Last season, the build up that we had from week one of pre-season was uninterrupted for those eight weeks, and I think that really helped us in getting off to a flyer in the Magners League; this season we haven’t had anything like that.
“It is pretty fragmented and a challenge to us but a lot of the other sides had similar pre-season. Leinster, obviously, are in the same situation. We need to deal with that. We have guys at different stages of preparedness – we’re not going to throw the Lions into a training session with guys who have been back five or six weeks.
“The pre-season games are very, very important to us. It’ll be quite a new-look side in many ways and we’ll be looking to integrate those guys who’ve come in and work on combinations and hopefully come Magners League Part One (rounds one to five) know exactly where we’re going.”
The pre-season games against Sale (August 14), London Irish (August 21) and Leicester (August 28) will likely see many fringe players get a run as well as some new faces from abroad, amongst them former Waikato Chiefs scrum half, Toby Morland and French prop, Julien Brugnaut. “Toby’s an excellent player, very, very fit and technically very, very good, as you’d expect from a New Zealand scrum half,” said Payne. “He’s tough as nails and you obviously can only tell so much from training, but from what we’ve seen so far we’re very impressed, and it’ll be interesting to see how he goes in the pre-season games.”
He added: “We have studied a lot of Julien’s game, and we’ve seen what he’s capable of. He seems very strong in the scrum as expected from someone who had almost a full Top 14 season last season (with Dax). He started most of those games. We’ll see. I’m sure he’ll fit in really, really well.
“He seems a lad who’s really keen for it. He thinks it’ll be a big honour to play for Munster which we’re absolutely delighted with and I have a very good feeling that he’ll fit in. He seems to be quite dynamic, able to get around the park.
“He plays tight and loose-head which was a requirement when we brought him here.”
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