HAVING TURNED 25 earlier this year, it’s only natural that CJ Stander has a more assured, mature air about him.
The powerful back row has been an engaging and confident presence since his arrival in Ireland in 2012 – and always was in his native South Africa – but this season has seen him fully emerge as a figure of leadership for Munster.
Head coach Anthony Foley has recognised as much by making Stander his captain in the absence of the injured Peter O’Mahony.
Stander, now qualified to play for Ireland, appears more than comfortable with the additional responsibility. He captained the vast majority of teams he represented as a youth, but admits that skippering Munster is not very similar.
“It’s totally different, there’s a big step up for me as a leader,” says the Limerick-based loose forward. “It’s just the history of the club, the boys before me who captained the side, and what they achieved.
“The other teams, I always lead them because I’m the leader but now there’s so much history in this group and you want to win stuff. We have players that have achieved stuff in this group, that you need to lead them as a captain.
I said to myself ‘I need to lead by example,’ play as good as I can, train as good as I can and they’ll follow me.”
Stander is certainly in the mould of leadership by example, a model that has been handed down through the generations of captains and influential figures at the province.
The number eight saw first-hand how men like Ronan O’Gara and Paul O’Connell were leaned upon by their Munster teammates and recognises the need for himself to fill that role in weeks such as this one, which leads into a Champions Cup tie with Leicester.
“You always looked up to those boys during these weeks. They led the charge, but now we are a young group, so there is a new leaders group and it is upon me and a lot of the leaders to drive these standards,” says Stander.
“I don’t like a lot of talking. I just want to show them and that is how I try to drive the standards. That is how, as a team, are going forward this week.”
Stander names Conor Murray, Denis Hurley, Tomás O’Leary and Ian Keatley as characters who are driving the standards alongside him, men who speak well in front of the Munster group.
Their presence means Stander doesn’t feel any burden in his role as captain.
“We’re a young group and there’s a lot of new faces, young guys in the squad, and I think we spoke as a group about wanting to create our own legacy and win stuff. You can’t look back on what they did in ’06 and ’08.
“It’s not the same people, there’s a few of those players coaching now. For me, it’s not a burden at all captaining Munster, it’s a huge challenge because it brings a different level to my game.”
Munster need to bring a different level to their game as a collective force on Saturday evening in Limerick, following disheartening back-to-back defeats to Connacht and the Dragons in the Guinness Pro12.
Stander points to mistakes in players’ mental prep as the most decisive contributing factor to those losses, and rejects any suggestion that there is a lack of clarity to Munster’s attacking game plan at present.
His belief and expectation is that, once again, Munster will dip into their well of European motivation and deliver against the Tigers.
“These weeks just pick everyone up,” says Stander. “There is an intensity in training. We say this every European week, but there is a lift in intensity. In mental preparation, there is a lift in every individual and that comes into the team.
“Everyone just expects the best out of every player. In these last two weeks, everyone has been taking a deep look at themselves and they know what went wrong.”
Stander highlights Leicester’s ability to retain possession and their improved passing game as two threats for Munster to be wary of on Saturday, while underlining that the game will be “won and lost” with the pack’s ability to outmuscle the Tigers at set-piece time.
“I think this is going to be the changing of the game, who’s going to dominate who. The last two weeks, the other team has dominated our pack. These boys need to step up and play the Munster rugby we know we can play, from the start of this season and last.”
It’s an odd point of the campaign for all professional rugby players who are nearing the end of a contract, “silly season” as Foley terms it. Rumours abound and while Stander has already signed a two-year contract, several of his teammates have yet to negotiate their own.
Does that bring with it more difficulty to motivate oneself, knowing that some of those around you haven’t yet committed their futures to the cause?
I always say to myself you don’t know what the rest of the boys are going to do,” says Stander. “I know where I’m going to be for the next two years but for now, for me, it’s just what we can do this year.
“It’s probably not what you want to hear but if they stay or if they don’t stay, they’re going to be here until June and we can work as a team until then and then start talking pre-season, whether it’s with new faces or old faces.
“I try to stay out of it. Those contract negotiations, for me, always it’s been a tough time. You need some help but you don’t want to push a guy. You leave him off and let him deal with where he’s at. If he wants to stay, he’ll stay. If he doesn’t want to stay, you can’t keep him.”
