{"id":21630,"date":"2026-01-13T22:09:17","date_gmt":"2026-01-13T22:09:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/21630\/"},"modified":"2026-01-13T22:09:17","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T22:09:17","slug":"jean-kleyn-gloucester-sign-world-cup-winning-south-african-lock-for-2026-27","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/21630\/","title":{"rendered":"Jean Kleyn: Gloucester sign World Cup-winning South African lock for 2026-27"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Gloucester have signed World Cup-winning South Africa lock Jean Kleyn for the 2026-27 season, after 10 years playing for United Rugby Championship side Munster.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Kleyn has been capped 10 times by the Springboks since his debut in 2023 and came off the bench <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/rugby-union\/67252413\" class=\"ssrcss-k8mrr8-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">for the World Cup final win<\/a> against New Zealand that same autumn. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He has also represented Ireland, playing five matches during 2019-20 including two at the 2019 World Cup, having qualified on residency grounds after signing for Munster three years earlier.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Jean is a player I&#8217;ve admired for a long time. He brings real edge, experience, and a winning mentality, which will be invaluable for our group,&#8221; Gloucester director of rugby George Skivington said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;His physical presence and professionalism will raise standards across the squad, and we&#8217;re excited to welcome him to Kingsholm.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gloucester have signed World Cup-winning South Africa lock Jean Kleyn for the 2026-27 season, after 10 years playing&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21631,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[131],"class_list":{"0":"post-21630","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-south-africa","8":"tag-south-africa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21630\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}