IT’S GOOD TO be home, says Oli Jager, but it’s bloody freezing.
It will be 11 years this year since a Kildare-raised, Blackrock College graduate missed out on a spot in Leinster’s academy and upped sticks for New Zealand in pursuit of a professional rugby career.
And boy, did Jager make it happen. It wasn’t long before he rose to the rank of Crusader under Scott Robertson, winning five Super Rugby titles with the Canterbury franchise.
Jager had the time of his life in Christchurch. He and his wife Georgi married there in late 2022. Around the same time, he had been due to tour Ireland with New Zealand’s second string. It would have taken him a step closer to wearing the All Blacks jersey proper.
Injury ruled him out of that encounter with Ireland ‘A’ at the RDS, however. He remained rooted in New Zealand. The pandemic had already determined that he hadn’t been able to visit home in three years.
All of which might have had something to do with the conclusion at which Jager arrived last year. It may simply have been age, too, and the perspective that comes with it. But Ireland eventually began to beckon him back up north.
And Jager answered its call — or rather, he put in a few of his own to let it be known that he was keen to head home and make up for time lost, if certainly not wasted.
Munster, longtime admirers of the 28-year-old and shy of difference-making front-row quality, were only delighted to assist with the move.
“It was in the works for a wee bit but it definitely happened a lot quicker than we thought it would happen, too,” Jager says. “I just had an opportunity to start earlier than I was meant to and I thought why not get on a plane, get over as soon as I could, and kind of go from there.
It was something that I sent out, that I was interested in going home. I knew that Munster had been interested before. They were one of the teams that were interested again and I thought it was a match made in Heaven, as such.
“I wanted to go to them and they wanted me to be a part of their team as well.”
Ireland head coach Andy Farrell will have been chuffed with the move, too: another tighthead with test-level potential added to his depth chart ahead of this year’s Six Nations defence, and one of an age profile that could see Jager become a longer-term fixture.
Munster’s new recruit was today named as a development player within Farrell’s wider squad. He’s enthusiastic about trying his hand in an international setup for the first time.
But to what extent did playing for Ireland influence his decision to move home?
“Really, not a whole lot,” says Jager. “I came home for my own interests, my own reasons, honestly.
It was one of those ones where, y’know, I just decided one day that I was pretty ready to come home; get back to Ireland, get back closer to family, closer to old friends, as I’d missed quite a bit over the years.
“Obviously, that’s always there: to be able to play for Ireland, to be able to represent the country I grew up in. I’d love to put my foot in that camp and see how it goes.
“But the reasons for why I came home were family-based and personal-based more than anything else.
“Eventually, the homesickness came for me. It only took 10 or 11 years!”
Former Crusader Jager is one of three new Munster signings to have arrived from New Zealand this season alongside a couple of ex-Chiefs: North Island man Alex Nankivell and John Ryan, a native of Muskerry East.
As such, there is only so much that Jager can teach Nankivell about Ireland — and Munster in particular — that hasn’t been covered already by his fellow front-rower.
“If you want to call him a Munster legend — he’s played over 200 games for Munster — to have him in your camp when you’ve already played with him, to have him kind of show you around town, is fantastic,” Jager says of Ryan.
“Obviously, I know John a little bit, too. I’ve played against him twice. Great guy.
I think more people picked up an Irish accent from him than he did a Kiwi accent. He’s got such a hard Cork accent that I think it’s impossible for him to lose it.
“He keeps trying to make excuses about that final (Jager’s Crusaders beat Ryan’s Chiefs in last year’s Super Rugby decider), but I don’t let him live it down.
“And Nanks has been great. He’s gotten to know [Limerick] pretty quickly. He’s finding his feet.”
The most profound cultural change for Jager, meanwhile, has been experienced in the scrum.
A disciple of All Blacks forwards coach Jason Ryan since their work together in the Crusaders academy in 2014, Jager had only ever scrummaged professionally in the southern hemisphere until literally last month.
There is a glee with which he recounts his “ding-dong battle” with “one of the best looseheads in the world”, Andrew Porter, during Leinster’s defeat of Munster at Thomond Park on St Stephen’s Day. “He got a couple on me, I got a couple on him,” Jager says.
But he has certainly found there to be a significant difference in the scrum battle both in the URC and in Europe during the early throes of his Munster career.
“In New Zealand, it’s very much that you very much know what everyone’s going to do — especially because we play each other about 15 times a year,” Jager says. “It’s all very similar in New Zealand, how teams play and how they scrum.
“I could go on for two days about this but the biggest thing is that there’s so many influences from different countries up in Europe. I could go into the angles and I could go into who’s standing up, who’s going down and all of that kind of stuff, but the main thing is just that I find the bodies bigger here. Everyone feels a little bit stronger, a bit broader, and it definitely makes a difference when you’re hitting into them and you’re trying to keep down.”
Jager will have to make one further adaptation before he becomes a fully fledged Munsterman.
The tighthead is expected to be released from his training-only role in Ireland’s extended squad ahead of the opening weekend of the Six Nations so that he can partake in a game of almost equal personal significance.
On Saturday, 3 February, Munster will welcome Jager’s former club, the Crusaders, to Páirc Uí Chaoimh for a one-off encounter between URC and Super Rugby champions.
And Jager admits that it’s going to be “weird” to square off with years-long friends and teammates on Irish soil.
“I’ve never played for anybody else. Crusaders will always have a spot in my heart and I’ll always support them down in Super Rugby.
“To play against them is going to be a pretty cool feeling. Coming up here, I thought, ‘You’re never going to see them again.’
“Of all teams for Crusaders to come up and play, for it to be my new team, and the fact that we’ve got it in Páirc Uí Chaoimh, too, with 40-odd-thousand people… it’s going to be one hell of an event and atmosphere.
“I know from talking to some of my friends down south that they’re excited for it. I don’t know if you’ve ever played against a bunch of friends in the opposition team but I always find that when you play your mates, you tend to go a little bit harder. You’re always looking for that big hit or whatever.
I think the hard part is not the fact that I’ll be looking at them but the fact that I’ll have 15 players looking at me, trying to do the same thing. The hard part will be looking at my mates trying to see who’s going to take my legs.
As for whether his Crusaders mates have an idea as to the magnitude of the occasion that awaits them, or indeed the role played by various touring Kiwi sides in Munster Rugby lore, Jager says: “I think they’ll definitely get to it, especially with Rob Penney coaching them. He understands the history of our team and what Munster have done before.
“When the week comes, when they start building into it — I’m even sure they’ll start talking about it now — they’ll get all that history into them.
“Hopefully they’ll know how big of an occasion this will be. They’ll get to know it if they don’t already.”
Munster v Crusaders, in association with Pinergy, will take place at a sold-out crowd at Páirc Uí Chaoimh, Cork, on Saturday 3 February, live on TG4.
