Cape Town – It might be stretching things a bit to say that WP Rugby has effectively been the donor of “two generations” of high-calibre lock forwards to Ireland’s national cause.

Yet it somehow almost seems that way, considering the revelation this week that strapping former Stormers second-rower Jean Kleyn (Munster) has been included as an uncapped member of an extended Irish training squad for the 2019 World Cup.

It was just three years earlier, remember, that another once-budding Newlands-based lock, the abrasive Quinn Roux, made his maiden appearance in the emerald jersey – ironically against his country of birth in Johannesburg.

Latest brawny Irish “capture” Kleyn qualifies for the Six Nations outfit in August, when he will have served out the three-year residency qualification period.

Still only 25 (locks arguably reach their street-wise prime closer to 28 or 29, and sometimes even later), the Krugersdorp-born competitor cut his first-class teeth, and very promisingly so, in the shadow of Table Mountain.

First active in the maroon jersey of Maties following his migration to the Western Cape, he could truly be said to have been “developed” as a pro sportsman by WP Rugby, as he represented the province at U19 competitive level before gradually advancing to senior WP/Stormers status between 2014 and 2016.

Roux’s situation, just a handful of years earlier, had much in common: also having gone through a student phase with Maties after shifting southward from his Pretoria roots, he was a Vodacom Cup winner with WP at the tender age of 21, and by the following season was making his Super Rugby debut (a suitably vibrant one, I recall) for the Stormers against the Bulls at Loftus.

It was as a second-half substitute as he replaced another notably bright young thing in the Stormers’ ranks – a certain Eben Etzebeth – in a match won by the Allister Coetzee-coached eventual conference winners 19-14.

There was little wonder that the similarly fresh-faced Etzebeth was hauled off with around half an hour to go in that derby: he was earmarked just a week later by Bok coach Heyneke Meyer for a Springbok debut against England, the first of what has now swelled to 75 caps and current status as one of the premier five or so locks, almost certainly, on the planet.

Given that both are also really best suited to tighter-playing “No 4” duties in the second-row (the Bakkies Botha sort of role rather than the Victor Matfield, if you like), it could feasibly be submitted that Roux and Kleyn partly flew the Newlands coop through awareness that their chances of regular starts were going to be thwarted for the foreseeable future by the formidable Etzebeth.

Ironically, Etzebeth is on the brink now of ending eight years of senior-level service to WP Rugby by taking up a lucrative reported deal with Toulon: he has also tended to experience most of his injury-related layoffs while in Super Rugby rather than Test mode, meaning that men like Roux and Kleyn would have had plenty of first-team exposure anyway had they stayed in warmer climes.

And yes, Etzebeth will leave a rather gaping hole at the cash-challenged franchise next year.

Of course, South Africa traditionally sprouts promising locks by the bag-load, so that helps offset the understandable concerns about the droves of them – plus players in heaps of other positions, of course – who do abandon our shores for richer contracts in Europe and sometimes elsewhere.

Thank goodness, too, that at least for the time being, probably the best quartet of SA second-rowers for international purposes are all safely, multi-capped already for the green-and-gold cause: Etzebeth, Lood de Jager, Franco Mostert and RG Snyman.

From next year, all of that quartet are expected to be based abroad, but under present SA Rugby policy remain available for the Boks anyway … that is a relief in terms of short- to medium-term planning.

But less palatable, I may not be alone in thinking, is the increasing hallmark of generally young, powerful, genetically-blessed (most often Afrikaans) lock forwards not only fleeing SA employment but then biding their time patiently at their various club bases abroad to qualify for European Test outfits – and well before the likely peak of their careers, in several instances.

What that effectively means is that, yes, we are nurturing, with increased pace and frequency and whether we like it or not, tight-forward enforcers for enemy powers, a phenomenon that may only have some of the wind taken from its sails if residency qualification periods are (unexpectedly, at this point?) lengthened in a meaningful way.

It is only a few months ago, don’t forget, that Paul Willemse (currently 26, Pretoria-born and a particularly significant physical specimen at 2.01m and 130kg-plus) made his Parisian debut for France against Wales in the 2019 Six Nations.

Willemse, who had two all-too-fleeting years of Super Rugby with the Bulls, is a product of the last “Baby Bok” team to win the then-IRB Junior World Championship in 2012, beating New Zealand in the memorable Capetonian final.

His partner in the second row that day was another towering figure in the shape of now Sharks-based Ruan Botha.

Ah yes, the 2.05m Botha, who doesn’t have to look up to too many in a conversation at a cocktail party, is off soon to the invitingly cosmopolitan pastures of London Irish.

We’re still a lock factory.

We just seem to be doing an intensifying amount of “exporting” … and some remodelled machines may even come back to try to trample us?

*Follow our chief writer on Twitter: @RobHouwing