Not exactly Bakkies and Victor, but Kleyn and Snyman are blood brothers

Bakkies Botha and Victor Matfield were known as the blood brothers because of a lengthy, complimentary, and legendary combination at lock for South Africa. 

Given they're only about to start their first game for the Springboks as a lock pairing in the Rugby World Cup warm-up game against Wales on Saturday, Jean Kleyn and RG Snyman don't quite trip off the tongue as a combo as Botha and Matfield once did. 

But the friendship between the two makes them blood brothers.

The Munster men of South African extraction - who won the United Rugby Championship earlier this season - met in 2020, when Snyman joined the Irish club not long after winning the World Cup with the Springboks. 

As international players they couldn't have been at more different places: Snyman had that newly minted world champion smell about him, while Kleyn was choking in the bitter aftertaste of his adopted nation Ireland’s quarterfinal curse at the World Cup. 

Yet as luck would have it, they would play their next international game together - for the Springboks in this year's Rugby Championship opener against Australia -with Kleyn starting and Snyman coming off the bench. 

Much happened in the three years since they first met. 

Snyman suffered two back-to-back anterior cruciate ligament injuries and severe burns in that infamous fire pit incident which befell Munster players, while the 29-year-old Kleyn's tortuous rugby journey came full circle when SA director of rugby Rassie Erasmus took advantage of the change in World Rugby's eligibility rules by naming him in the Bok World Cup preparation squad. 

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In the intervening years, the two have become firm enough friends, according to Kleyn.   

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