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Newly minted Glaswegian understands those that don't want him in a Scottish jersey

By Jamie Lyall
Kyle Steyn of Scotland (Photo by Ashley Vlotman/Gallo Images)

Kyle Steyn tells a story about unity, forgiveness and love, the tale of a white South African cop assigned to protect Nelson Mandela amid some of the most volatile days the nation had seen.

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The subject of the yarn is Steyn’s father, Rory, a former Johannesburg police officer raised in the days of apartheid and conditioned by division. In 1994, he was hired to lead the security team who watched over the newly-elected president during his five-year term – he knew little of what to expect or what kind of man he had been tasked with guarding.

As it transpired, Rory Steyn had court-side seats to the fusion of a people. He was at Ellis Park when Mandela was greeted by a rapturous frenzy three days after his inauguration.

He ran security for the All Blacks at the 1995 World Cup – and remains convinced they were poisoned the week of their final loss to the Springboks in the most poignant match in rugby history. He famously bundled Mandela and Prince Charles into the back of a Rolls Royce to escape a stampede of clamouring supporters in Brixton.

He saw these huge public events but he was also privy to moments of great spontaneous beauty. The intellect, the humility, the unwavering benevolence of Mandela, whether addressing a gnarled Afrikaner or a gawping child, captivated him. These were values he would impress upon his three boys.

(Continue reading below…)

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“My dad worked for a special branch of the police, so he talks about how he was listening to bugged phone lines of people that worked for Mr Mandela, then four years later he was working for Mr Mandela,” Steyn says.

“He learned that Mr Mandela had only taken him on because he’d been working for that branch – Mandela was trying to make an example of his own security team, about how he could get white bodyguards of the old apartheid regime and people who had looked after Mandela all the way through his time in jail to integrate and interact and be a perfectly functioning team.

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“Dad openly admits when he was younger he voted for the pro-apartheid party. He said it was incredible to see all the perceptions of Mandela, the way he acted in front of people and behind closed doors were just 100% consistent. The way he treated people, no matter where he was, was just mind-blowing to my dad.

“So certainly growing up, we were under no illusions as to how to be inclusive of everybody and that’s certainly something I’m most thankful to my dad for – having that open mind, I’ve got so many black and white team-mates that have all been great friends.”

The roots of Steyn’s blistering ascent through Scottish rugby were laid in Glasgow long ago. Douglas, his maternal grandfather, was an engineer from Bearsden, the plush city suburb a few miles from Scotstoun, where his grandson has thundered on to the scene as a potent member of the Warriors backline.

Kyle Steyn began his journey in sevens (Photo by Ashley Vlotman/Gallo Images)
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Steyn’s mother and her three sisters were born here before Douglas found work in South Africa and emigrated with his brood. “My granddad’s got two brothers, one stayed here in Bearsden and his family still lives here, so I’ve been up there to see him and they showed me the house where they actually grew up, which is cool,” Steyn says.

“My mum’s family is crazy about Flower of Scotland, so putting the TV on for the anthem was almost more of a thing than watching the actual game. The four girls and my gran were interested in the anthem and my granddad and I were interested in the rugby. They’re not good singers at all.

“The Fiji game [in November] was the first game I watched at Murrayfield and hearing Flower of Scotland there was spine-chilling with no music and then the pipes go off…unbelievable.”

Gregor Townsend stumbled across Steyn in almost comical fashion. He was in Bloemfontein to watch Glasgow play the Cheetahs and got chatting to the bloke handing out the sponsor’s man of the match award. The man turned out to be a friend of Rory’s, who said there was a handy young centre captaining the Griquas Currie Cup team and did Townsend know the lad happened to be Scottish-qualified?

“Gregor passed it on to [Scottish Rugby’s director of rugby] Scott Johnson and [Scotland Sevens coach] John Dalziel. I got a call from Scott Johnson asking if I saw Scotland as the future for me and I said yes from the word go,” Steyn says.

“I got in contact with John and came over last February for a trial period with the sevens, did two weeks’ training and managed to go away with the side to LA and Vancouver. John stayed in contact with me the whole way through the year and eventually I got a sevens contract.”

The goal was always to get a XVs deal and now Steyn has made it happen. At 25, he will be a full-time Glasgow player next season but with Dave Rennie losing so much firepower to the Scotland and to the treatment table, he has started each of the Warriors’ last four PRO14 matches and been among the most impressive performers in every outing. He was even called into the Scotland camp in the last week of the Six Nations amid a heinous spate of injuries.

There was a little anxiety about how his new team-mates would feel about a South African called Steyn fetching up and pulling on a blue jersey. There have been critics too of his rapid elevation to the national squad – not because he’s a poor player or a bad guy, but because it is seen as a slap in the face to those who have learned their rugby in Scotland.

“I’m here because I want to make a difference to the Warriors, to the sevens, to Scottish rugby as a whole. I understand where those people are coming from but I’m sure we’ve got the same goal – they just want what’s best for Scottish rugby and so do I,” Steyn says.

“My dad actually asked one of the sevens boys about that, in thanking him for the way they welcomed me, and he just said, ‘We’ve got a really small pool of players, a couple of South Africans, a couple of New Zealanders – that’s something we’ve got to adapt to, to help ourselves compete with these teams’.”

By sheer good fortune, Steyn’s parents were able to watch him crashing over for his first Glasgow try on Saturday – fittingly, against the Cheetahs – as they follow their youngest son on a high school rugby tour around Britain. Clan Steyn will descend on Allianz Park this weekend when Glasgow arrive aiming to inflict only Saracens’ fifth home defeat in the Champions Cup for eight years and reach the semi-finals for the first time in the club’s history.

The pair have already contested two ferociously brutal and immensely hot-tempered pool affairs this season. Saracens won both. In the first, at Scotstoun, there was as much collar-grabbing and shunting and off-the-ball verbals as there was rugby. Maro Itoje greeted a disallowed Glasgow try with sarcastic revelry. Rennie sent a clips reel featuring unspotted incidents, errors and reckless clear-outs to the tournament organisers after Mathieu Raynal’s erratic performance with the whistle.

Chuck in the howitzer of a Calcutta Cup draw at Twickenham, in which 11 Saracens and Warriors featured, Ryan Wilson’s antagonistic cameo on a rugby podcast, and Rennie’s midweek assertion that his opponents attempt to compensate for their errors with “a lot of push-and-shove to maybe bring the referee in to change a decision”, and the stage is set for another engrossing, angst-ridden duel.

“We need to put in a really physical performance but mainly it’s just a belief thing, believing we can go down there and get the win,” Steyn says.

“Making the ref aware of what they’re up to and making sure they’re not successful with it is probably the big one. They’re trying to throw us off from achieving something we want to do, and our main focus has got to be that we still want to achieve that. The boys are certainly going to be fired up and nobody will step down.”

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Jon 1 hours ago
Jake White: Are modern rugby players actually better?

This is the problem with conservative mindsets and phycology, and homogenous sports, everybody wants to be the same, use the i-win template. Athlete wise everyone has to have muscles and work at the gym to make themselves more likely to hold on that one tackle. Do those players even wonder if they are now more likely to be tackled by that player as a result of there “work”? Really though, too many questions, Jake. Is it better Jake? Yes, because you still have that rugby of ole that you talk about. Is it at the highest International level anymore? No, but you go to your club or checkout your representative side and still engage with that ‘beautiful game’. Could you also have a bit of that at the top if coaches encouraged there team to play and incentivized players like Damian McKenzie and Ange Capuozzo? Of course we could. Sadly Rugby doesn’t, or didn’t, really know what direction to go when professionalism came. Things like the state of northern pitches didn’t help. Over the last two or three decades I feel like I’ve been fortunate to have all that Jake wants. There was International quality Super Rugby to adore, then the next level below I could watch club mates, pulling 9 to 5s, take on the countries best in representative rugby. Rugby played with flair and not too much riding on the consequences. It was beautiful. That largely still exists today, but with the world of rugby not quite getting things right, the picture is now being painted in NZ that that level of rugby is not required in the “pathway” to Super Rugby or All Black rugby. You might wonder if NZR is right and the pathway shouldn’t include the ‘amateur’, but let me tell you, even though the NPC might be made up of people still having to pull 9-5s, we know these people still have dreams to get out of that, and aren’t likely to give them. They will be lost. That will put a real strain on the concept of whether “visceral thrill, derring-do and joyful abandon” type rugby will remain under the professional level here in NZ. I think at some point that can be eroded as well. If only wanting the best athlete’s at the top level wasn’t enough to lose that, shutting off the next group, or level, or rugby players from easy access to express and showcase themselves certainly will. That all comes back around to the same question of professionalism in rugby and whether it got things right, and rugby is better now. Maybe the answer is turning into a “no”?

34 Go to comments
j
john 3 hours ago
Will the Crusaders' decline spark a slow death for New Zealand rugby?

But here in Australia we were told Penney was another gun kiwi coach, for the Tahs…….and yet again it turned out the kiwi coach was completely useless. Another con job on Australian rugby. As was Robbie Deans, as was Dave Rennie. Both coaches dumped from NZ and promoted to Australia as our saviour. And the Tahs lap them up knowing they are second rate and knowing that under pressure when their short comings are exposed in Australia as well, that they will fall in below the largest most powerful province and choose second rate Tah players to save their jobs. As they do and exactly as Joe Schmidt will do. Gauranteed. Schmidt was dumped by NZ too. That’s why he went overseas. That why kiwi coaches take jobs in Australia, to try and prove they are not as bad as NZ thought they were. Then when they get found out they try and ingratiate themselves to NZ again by dragging Australian teams down with ridiculous selections and game plans. NZ rugby’s biggest problem is that it can’t yet transition from MCaw Cheatism. They just don’t know how to try and win on your merits. It is still always a contest to see how much cheating you can get away with. Without a cheating genius like McCaw, they are struggling. This I think is why my wise old mate in NZ thinks Robertson will struggle. The Crusaders are the nursery of McCaw Cheatism. Sean Fitzpatrick was probably the father of it. Robertson doesn’t know anything else but other countries have worked it out.

15 Go to comments
A
Adrian 5 hours ago
Will the Crusaders' decline spark a slow death for New Zealand rugby?

Thanks Nick The loss of players to OS, injury and retirement is certainly not helping the Crusaders. Ditto the coach. IMO Penny is there to hold the fort and cop the flak until new players and a new coach come through,…and that's understood and accepted by Penny and the Crusaders hierarchy. I think though that what is happening with the Crusaders is an indicator of what is happening with the other NZ SRP teams…..and the other SRP teams for that matter. Not enough money. The money has come via the SR competition and it’s not there anymore. It's in France, Japan and England. Unless or until something is done to make SR more SELLABLE to the NZ/Australia Rugby market AND the world rugby market the $s to keep both the very best players and the next rung down won't be there. They will play away from NZ more and more. I think though that NZ will continue to produce the players and the coaches of sufficient strength for NZ to have the capacity to stay at the top. Whether they do stay at the top as an international team will depend upon whether the money flowing to SRP is somehow restored, or NZ teams play in the Japan comp, or NZ opts to pick from anywhere. As a follower of many sports I’d have to say that the organisation and promotion of Super Rugby has been for the last 20 years closest to the worst I’ve ever seen. This hasn't necessarily been caused by NZ, but it’s happened. Perhaps it can be fixed, perhaps not. The Crusaders are I think a symptom of this, not the cause

15 Go to comments
T
Trevor 8 hours ago
Will forgotten Wallabies fit the Joe Schmidt model?

Thanks Brett.. At last a positive article on the potential of Wallaby candidates, great to read. Schmidt’s record as an international rugby coach speaks for itself, I’m somewhat confident he will turn the Wallaby’s fortunes around …. on the field. It will be up to others to steady the ship off the paddock. But is there a flaw in my optimism? We have known all along that Australia has the players to be very competitive with their international rivals. We know that because everyone keeps telling us. So why the poor results? A question that requires a definitive answer before the turn around can occur. Joe Schmidt signed on for 2 years, time to encompass the Lions tour of 2025. By all accounts he puts family first and that’s fair enough, but I would wager that his 2 year contract will be extended if the next 18 months or so shows the statement “Australia has the players” proves to be correct. The new coach does not have a lot of time to meld together an outfit that will be competitive in the Rugby Championship - it will be interesting to see what happens. It will be interesting to see what happens with Giteau law, the new Wallaby coach has already verbalised that he would to prefer to select from those who play their rugby in Australia. His first test in charge is in July just over 3 months away .. not a long time. I for one wish him well .. heaven knows Australia needs some positive vibes.

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