{"id":548284,"date":"2026-07-13T23:48:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T23:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/548284\/"},"modified":"2026-07-13T23:48:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T23:48:10","slug":"new-zealand-clash-will-be-extra-special-for-breakout-ireland-star-sean-jansen-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/548284\/","title":{"rendered":"New Zealand clash will be extra special for breakout Ireland star Sean Jansen \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sean Jansen<\/a> made his debut, had a couple of big involvements early on, scored a try, Ireland<\/a> won and he received a man of the match award. So it didn\u2019t seem unreasonable to wonder if last Saturday\u2019s 36-20 win over Japan in Newcastle had been the best day of his career.<\/p>\n

But, no, the 27-year-old preferred to put it another way.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been the best week of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

The reasons perhaps go a little deeper even than the debut, the try, the win and the gong.<\/p>\n

One was that extended family and friends were in attendance, including his parents Kathleen and Fred and his influential uncle Luke, but for whom the Jansen story might never have come to pass.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was the one that made the highlights video for me that originally got me the contract in England, and so he came to my jersey presentation on Thursday and he had a bit of a tear in his eye. But it\u2019s just been one of those weeks. It\u2019s been amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been told before but it merits repeating in this week of all weeks. As he admitted in an interview last December, Jansen might have gone down a different path: \u201cTo be honest, I hung around with the wrong mates and got in a bit of trouble as a young person. I thought I could train hard and do whatever with your mates and be fine, but I was young and dumb and then I couldn\u2019t really get into the Otago team.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whereupon his uncle, who worked for the Institute of Sport in Canberra, suggested and then compiled a video highlights\u2019 package of him.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen he sent my highlight video around and then two weeks later I had a phone call from Steve Borthwick [Leicester coach at the time] and I was going to the Tigers. So, without him [uncle Luke] who knows where I would be. But it\u2019s just kind of a full circle moment, especially to play here and being close to where my family live.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously we\u2019re very Irish and had a load of Irish family here as well, but it\u2019s just cool that it was a small flight for them to come over.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was brilliant giving my mum a call and telling her. She had pre-booked the flights just in case. My mum, my dad, my brother, my uncle and four or five of my best mates flew over from New Zealand.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a whole crew here and my mum and dad had only watched me play in two games ever professionally,\u201d he said in reference to Connacht\u2019s games in South Africa against the Lions and the Stormers in April last year. \u201cAnd now they get to watch me play internationally, that\u2019s cool.\u201d<\/p>\n

Born and reared in Dunedin, Jansen\u2019s maternal grandparents James Brown and Maura Foster hailed from Belfast and Monasterevin. They met on the boat taking them to New Zealand in their late teens.<\/p>\n

His mum, Kathleen, is a nurse who married Fred Jansen, a policeman, and they reared five kids (Ciar\u00e1n, Emily, Eileen, Sean and Braeden) in the suburbs of Dunedin. He describes Dunedin as akin to Galway and one of the factors in signing for Connacht was to pursue his dream of playing for Ireland.<\/p>\n

\"Ireland'sIreland’s Jacob Stockdale, Sean Jansen and Jimmy O\u2019Brien during the national anthem. Photograph: Ben Brady\/Inpho <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been supporting Ireland since I was a kid. My mum\u2019s full Ireland, we\u2019ve always been in a half Irish household and it was always a dream, but it was kind of one of the ones you didn\u2019t know [could happen]. Then I think this season with Stu coming in with Connacht and the way we\u2019ve been going, it\u2019s just given me more and more confidence and it\u2019s gave the boys confidence and I just felt good out there. I loved it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a great time to be down west in Galway, but all the boys are so good, all the Leinster boys, the Ulster, the Munster boys that come together. It\u2019s just such a great tight group, I\u2019ve loved being on tour with the boys.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sampling the Ireland \u2018A\u2019 environment in February last year was invaluable, but even so he\u2019s been \u201cblown away\u201d in the last three weeks.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just such an awesome environment to be involved in. We have great craic with each other, but it\u2019s also very professional. Everyone keeps each other accountable to the standards that we hold ourselves to, and I just love being involved in it. I want more and more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jansen looks a live contender for a second cap against the All Blacks in the country of his birth.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would be a dream man, it would be a dream, especially to break that [unbeaten] record at Eden Park. So, we\u2019ll see what happens but I can\u2019t wait to get involved in the week.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s only one caveat.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe manager, Mick Kearney, is probably going to give me a bit of stick because I need about 30-40 tickets if I\u2019m playing in that game. <\/p>\n

\u201cNot many teams get to play at Eden Park, so it\u2019s a massive opportunity for us to come and hopefully break that record.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sean Jansen made his debut, had a couple of big involvements early on, scored a try, Ireland won…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":548285,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1451,61,60,1449,582,86133,43,231300],"class_list":["post-548284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-all-blacks","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-ireland-rugby","tag-japan","tag-nations-championship","tag-news","tag-sean-jansen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548284\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}