WHILE PLAYER OF the match Mike Haley came in for serious praise during Monday’s Rugby Weekly Extra podcast for his performance in Munster’s URC victory over Zebre, Murray Kinsella and Bernard Jackman felt that one player stood head and shoulders above the other 45 who took to the field in Cork.
Springbok World Cup winner RG Snyman put on a show on Leeside for the 54 minutes he spent in the game, setting up one try, scoring another, and provoking a bittersweet feeling in Munster fans who know his days in red are numbered.
The injury-plagued Snyman has played just 373 total minutes for Munster across 12 games since his arrival in the summer of 2020, making a key contribution to last season’s URC victory but otherwise missing out on the opportunity to leave his mark on the province.
But ahead of his departure for Leinster this summer, Kinsella and Jackman believe that Snyman can go some way towards changing that reality and become a game-changing presence in Graham Rowntree’s side.
“It was just laughable how much better he was than the standard of this game at times,” Murray Kinsella said of Snyman’s performance against Zebre. “His ball-handling… While it’s highlight-reel-worthy, it’s never wasteful or overdone or unnecessary.
“The offload, say, for Ruadhán Quinn’s first try: on the way to the ground, he has the presence of mind to dummy-offload, get the Zebre fullback (Gerónimo Prisciantelli) towards the touchline, and then play the offload off the ground.
“He is one of the best offloaders I’ve ever seen. Sonny Bill Williams, obviously, is up there as the best and I used to love Yannick Jauzion back in the day. Snyman’s feel for it, his peripheral vision, his appreciation for where others are and for where others are going to be, is really at a high level.
“He’s got a massive pair of hands on him so he can grip the ball in ways that other people can’t but the dexterity in his wrists and his ability to rotate his arms is really sharp as well. Some people just can’t get their hands into those positions when they’re being tackled and their body is dealing with that force and pressure from all sorts of different angles.
“He’s obviously a great signing for Leinster but it’s almost being lost how important he’s going to be for Munster in this last period of the season.
He really, really wants to finish on a high. From all I can understand, he has so much grá towards Munster for all they’ve done for him and from how much they’ve stuck by him. And I know that wasn’t the case right at the end, he had to move on, but he wants to finish on a high.
Snyman even dummying offloads to trick defenders these days.
— Murray Kinsella (@Murray_Kinsella) March 2, 2024
He is one of rugby's greatest offloaders. pic.twitter.com/rx2Fn4BgD9
Bernard Jackman, who co-commentated on Munster’s 45-22 victory from the stand of Virgin Media Park on Friday night, added: “It’s so rare you go to a game where you’d just go, ‘This fella’s playing on a completely different level.’
“I would say there’s probably only seven or eight players in the world — Antoine Dupont being one of them, and now he’s doing it in sevens — where you kind of just go, ‘How is he able to do that? How is he so much better than all of these lads who are all full-time, elite players?’
“The other night, I know it’s Zebre. But realistically, he can play an international and be head and shoulders above everybody else. I think it’s in single figures how many players in the world can have that influence.
“When you watch him play, you just think how unfortunate Munster have been that he’s had those injuries — but hopefully how fortunate they are that he’s there, now, for the tail-end of the season.”
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