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On April 19, Warren Gatland named his 41-man British and Irish Lions squad to tour New Zealand, and deservedly included among them was Munster and Ireland backrower CJ Stander.
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His inclusion was never really in any doubt, with most high profile pundits even going so far as to include him in their Test team for this summer’s three battles with the All Blacks.
But what makes a good Lion in any case? An unanswerable question surely, but three aspects crucial to being there in the first place are form, passion and belief.
When I was lucky enough to meet and chat with Stander in the summer, ahead of Ireland’s tour to South Africa, he was open and ambitious enough to reveal his career goals to me.
He had only just come off the back of his very first Six Nations campaign a couple of months earlier and had just concluded one of Munster’s most disappointing seasons in years, with the province scrambling to make Champions Cup qualification by the end.
A second consecutive group stage exit for the former two-time champions of Europe, a sixth-placed Pro12 finish and five international caps at that stage. But yet Stander didn’t blink when he revealed his objective to make the Lions squad in a year’s time.
“I want to get into the Lions squad if I can, that’s my next goal, and then if my body allows me, to play in the World Cup for Ireland in 2019,” Stander told me back in May.
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“On a personal level, I want to win a senior cup. I’ve never won a senior or provincial medal for the Bulls or Munster. I also want to win a Six Nations. That would be great.”
The first of those goals was achieved last week, as the man born in the Western Cape of South Africa was announced as a part of Gatland’s Lions squad.
A Lions tour, a World Cup, provincial silverware and the Six Nations title. Enough to make legends of the game satisfied with their careers, but such is the calibre of Stander, each goal seems infinitely within reach for the No 8, and in truth they did so even last summer when all did not appear so rosy.
Despite Munster’s poor form last year, Stander was one of very few bright sparks with his consistency of performance and power play remarkable. More than this, he grew into a leader last year in trying circumstances and he hasn’t looked back.
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He is now also a staple of Joe Schmidt’s Ireland XV. A XV which famously beat New Zealand and Australia in November, and also ended England’s long unbeaten run and Grand Slam attempt at the Aviva in March.
At Munster, the season has been one to remember. Spurred on by the devastating passing of head coach Anthony Foley and the razor sharp tactics of Director of Rugby Rassie Erasmus in his first season at the helm, Munster have enjoyed a superb campaign both domestically and in Europe.
A run to the semi-final of the European Cup against Saracens in Dublin, marked by an electric atmosphere and wonderful occasion generated by Munster’s supporters, along with a confirmed league semi-final on the horizon means Stander can look back contently.
Indeed, that semi-final defeat to Saracens encapsulated another aspect which will serve Stander so well as a Lion. Courage.
Clearly still affected by the ankle injury he sustained in the quarter-final victory over Toulouse, Stander was penciled in for no more than 50 minutes, but played on in clear pain as fellow backrowers Tommy O’Donnell and Peter O’Mahony were forced off.
An exceptional display of selflessness followed for his province as he limped and grimaced from ruck to ruck, eventually touching down for a try in the final minute. It was extraordinary, as Stander has been in every facet of his game for the last three seasons.
Sadly, the only thing not so rosy any longer is the repeated jibes at Stander concerning his eligibility for Ireland.
These have mostly been persisted by journalists who have never met or spoken with Stander, and rather disappointingly, frequently recurred by two high-profile Irish journalists.
There is an undoubted polemic nature to the residency rule, with many rugby players holding a genuine affection for their adopted nation, but it also indisputably true that such a rule leaves the sport wide-open to avaricious and mercenary motives.
One such player to have benefited from this rule is of course Stander. When speaking to him, there is a genuine feeling though that his case is different. This is a guy who was told there was nothing for him in South Africa and almost quit the game altogether. A guy who despite his clear talent was shafted, incredibly, for being “too small.”
As a consequence, he took the decision to grasp a chance with Munster and fly 10,000 kilometres to the opposite side of the globe. A decision he and his wife could not have taken lightly at just 22 years of age.
This is one of the things we do not take into account about the sportspeople that come to play in Britain, France or Ireland. The sacrifices they make are completely disregarded as everything is looked at solely through a sporting lens.
When speaking to Stander he added: “It was difficult, but the difficult thing was me leaving the farm and family behind, they’re my biggest support structure and leaving that behind meant that it was just me and my wife coming over and down to just the two of us.”
From a sports perspective, considering the power game Stander exhibits today, it is unfathomable, ridiculous even, to think that he was told he was too small.
Speaking to him, there is no kidology. It would be easy for Stander to say that he came to Ireland with an ambition of pulling on the green or that he had always admired the country etc., but he didn’t. He was straight. His love for and want to represent Ireland happened once he arrived, purely because he immersed himself into the community.
Stander’s affection for Ireland and the way he has embedded himself into Irish culture is sincere and obvious. Historically, it has often been said that his province Munster have been at their best when their backs are to the wall or when people doubt them. Stander arriving to Ireland with a chip on his shoulder, having been told that there was nothing for him in South Africa, can be seen as a real Munster mentality. Rejection, pain and injustice are not prerequisites for success but they definitely help, and when I spoke to Stander a steely determination was immediately noticeable in him.
There was genuine emotion in Stander’s voice when he spoke about the feelings he felt when making his debut for Ireland against Wales in February 2016.
“It’s difficult to put into words because my brain only came back to me about two hours after the match,” Stander told me back in May.
“I was crying that day and was just so proud to be on that level there with that group, standing there singing that anthem.
“From an Irish side, I’ve had a good connection with the supporters but you can’t keep everyone happy.
“I think in general everyone has been happy but you have a few who aren’t. For example I just saw on Twitter that people have changed the residency rule to the ‘CJ Stander rule’, so I will probably get an earful of that but that stuff doesn’t bother me as long as I work hard and do my job and show how much the jersey means to me.
“The other thing is that I’m not the first person to get in through this rule.
“There are a lot of people before me who just got in under the radar and they’re just a French or a Scottish player now.”
Twitter trolls aside, Stander’s comments testified to the fact that sport is in a vastly different space to the 1980’s and 1990’s even, let alone before that.
Today, domestic football leagues contain more foreign players than native ones, most noticeably in the Premier League of course, while second and third generation players are far more accepted simply because it is so widespread and commonplace within sport.
Stander saw an opportunity to further his career with Munster & Ireland and hasn’t looked back.
“There was a point where I got selected for the ‘Six Young Guns’, which is what they called us, where we trained with the Springboks and were like interns; if someone wanted to sit down I had to pull out their chair.
“There were six guys and out of that six, four guys have played Springboks and there’s just me and another guy but he’s very close to becoming a Springbok.
“At that stage though I just saw that, and it will sound weird, but I saw that I was not born to represent that jersey.
“I could just feel that for some reason. Two weeks later I arrived in Munster and I said to myself, ‘this is your decision, you have to back it.’
“I wasn’t born here, I have no Irish grandfather or anything under the ‘Granny rule’, but I just fell in love with this place and I put a lot of work into it and got a lot of work put into me as a player and also on a social level.
“It was a feeling, and I’m not sure why I had this feeling, but I was more comfortable in a country that I was not born or supposed to be, and it comes down to fate: that I am supposed to here and supposed to do what I’m doing.
I belie anyone to meet and talk to Stander and still argue that he should not be allowed to play for Ireland or the Lions. The truth is that it is people like Stander who are prouder to be Irish and represent Ireland than many who grow up in the country itself.
“Maybe I should have been born in Ireland and maybe someone else should have been born in South Africa,” he says at the end of an extraordinary elucidation of his feelings.
Don’t misinterpret me though, this is not to say that the residency rule isn’t flawed. It definitely is. But there are exceptions and there are people who can move countries and genuinely and veritably adopt them as their own, as it is clear Stander has done.
As part of a wider project I was producing on nationalism in Irish sport, I asked all my contributors what being Irish meant to them. Stander’s answer was one of, if not the most emotional of all my contributors. During our meeting, Stander paused for 13 long seconds just looking down at the desk between us, intensely focusing on how he wanted to put his answer. He treated it almost as a love letter of thanks to his adopted nation and explained the accommodating, supportive and selfless nature of Ireland in great sentiment and detail.
He will serve the Lions proudly and with tremendous dignity and to suggest otherwise would not only be in poor taste, but erroneous to the extreme. In New Zealand rugby they have a phrase: “better people make better All Blacks”. If that can be applied to the Lions as well then the backrow will be in good hands with Stander.
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