LONG READ Seb Stephen: Scotland's newest debutant, an 'absolute monster' raised in a medieval castle

Along the B-roads which snake northwest from Aberdeen’s granite hub, where grey turns to green and severe old rock makes way for rolling pasture, sits Barra Castle. This place is steeped in history; a seat from which lairds and nobles once presided over the land; and during a fraught and vengeful time of civil war, much blood was shed. Six years before the Battle of Bannockburn in 1308, King Robert the Bruce rose from his sickbed and bested his rival John Comyn, Earl of Buchan in the shadow of Barra Hill. The king’s triumphant army tore through the countryside, razing to the ground homes and farms belonging to those loyal to the vanquished earl, wiping out any lingering dissention.

These days, the battlefield sits dormant but Barra is a site of thriving enterprise. The Stephen family has farmed here for more than 120 years, and owned the land, the grounds and buildings for over half a century. The castle has been renovated and become their home base.

Here, among the ancient stonework, the crops and the animals, Scotland’s newest rugby debutant spent his childhood. The son of David, a fourth-generation farmer, and Sarah (née Mack), a prominent TV presenter and journalist, Seb Stephen is 21 and the kind of powerhouse hooker the nation seldom produces.

Stephen is the second of four brothers and their early years were dominated by the rigors and the joy of farm life. The family rear sheep and cows, grow fruit for their bustling Barra Berries farm shop, and have erected a wedding barn and lodges to harness the booming demand for rustic, rural venues.

 

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“Nobody appreciates Aberdeen when you’re not from there but ‘the Shire’ [Aberdeenshire] is a pretty amazing place to be brought up,” Stephen says. “I love going home whenever I can and really appreciate where I’m from. All four of us have always been on the farm helping Dad, playing rugby, football, even a little bit of wrestling – absolutely everything we could get our hands on.

“Dad does the sheep and the cattle and runs all the soft fruit we grow. Mum runs the wedding venue side because I don’t think Dad would manage to sell weddings to people. He’s not amazing in front of a camera.”

Stephen is an awesome prospect; an amalgam of functional farm strength and rugby conditioning. Gregor Townsend and his forwards lieutenant John Dalziel are huge admirers and capped him in the July win over Fiji. Townsend put Stephen in because he believes the young forward has the wherewithal to make his World Cup squad next autumn.

Yet four years ago, upon leaving school, Stephen attracted little interest from the Scottish rugby ecosystem. He’d been in and out of the Caledonia pathway and was not offered an academy contract. Instead, and with some encouragement from his parents, he travelled across the world. Stephen headed to New Zealand – for life experience rather than any rugby ambitions – and landed in Auckland shortly before his 18^th birthday. He took a job as a form of teacher’s aide known as a ‘gappie’ and was invited to play with the University of Waikato team despite never actually enrolling there.

They are never getting worked up which is something you see a lot with age-grade rugby over here, there is so much pressure on young boys that when they make a mistake or get dropped, which I went through myself, you think it’s the end of the world.

“I was a bit isolated at the start,” he says. “I was working in a school as a gap student. I found a rugby club at the university – I don’t know if they put me on a course I didn’t have to study for – and they just told me to come down and play. They set me up with accommodation for the nights I drove down from Auckland to Hamilton and the training was quite late.

“When you find something in common with people, you just gel immediately. I found it so easy to get along with them because everyone in New Zealand is obsessed with rugby. That’s not the main reason I went out there, but as soon as I was playing week in, week out and having fun, I started loving rugby again. I was involved with men’s rugby which I hadn’t really experienced before.

“They have such a free way of thinking about the game and are so relaxed about it. They are never getting worked up which is something you see a lot with age-grade rugby over here, there is so much pressure on young boys that when they make a mistake or get dropped, which I went through myself, you think it’s the end of the world. Over there, when they don’t make the first team they’re like ‘oh, I’ll go play colts this weekend’. A different philosophy; a relaxed, ‘next opportunity’ mentality.”

After a year in rugby utopia, Stephen was not particularly inclined to come home. Then he took a call from Kenny Murray, the former Scotland U20s coach. Murray’s hooker stocks had been depleted, and he wanted Stephen to join the squad. Scotland had been relegated from World Rugby’s top-tier competition and needed to win that summer’s ‘Trophy’ tournament to claim back their place among the big boys.

“I was in two minds about coming back but I always wanted to play for Scotland,” Stephen says. “I thought it was probably the right decision to come back and really give it a go.

“It was a shock to the system. In New Zealand I was playing fairly social rugby – all the Scotland U20s boys had been in a professional environment gymming four times a week and training and I had barely touched weights. I didn’t regret it at all. Had I stayed in New Zealand another year, my opportunities might have come differently and I might not be in the position I am today.”

Scotland won the Trophy, and Stephen would become a mainstay of the age-grade pack. He played in the U20 Six Nations, went in to train with Glasgow, and was soon summoned by Franco Smith. Hookers were injured. Stephen was going to debut. Against Leinster. In Dublin. As a starter. He’d been in the Glasgow environment barely a fortnight.

This was no end-of-season knockabout either. It was in the Aviva bowl before a crowd of close to 20,000. On their previous trip to the Irish capital just six weeks earlier, the Warriors were shellacked to the tune of 52 unanswered points in the Champions Cup quarter-finals.

I was getting messages, people saying ‘have you seen who is in their team?’ Yeah, I have actually.

Stephen’s opposite number would be Dan Sheehan, one of the finest front-rows in the world. Two months later, Sheehan was anointed the Lions’ first-choice hooker. He was flanked by Andrew Porter, built like a bull on the Barra family farm, and Tom Clarkson, a 125kg brute who had several Six Nations starts to his name. RG Snyman and James Ryan packed down behind this imposing trio. Jack Conan was at number eight. Ronan Kelleher, Jack Boyle and Tadgh Furlong were on the bench. In other words, killers everywhere.

“At the beginning of the week I was pretty excited about who I was going to be playing against and then to see pretty much a Lions front-row on the pitch was unbelievable,” Stephen remembers. “I was getting messages, people saying ‘have you seen who is in their team?’ Yeah, I have actually.

“The build-up to the game, I was so nervous. I’d never been part of a professional environment and I was chucked into a game within the first two weeks of training with Glasgow. The night before, I got three or four hours of sleep, your mind is racing, playing out every scenario possible of what could happen in the game. But your confidence grows when you’re around so many great leaders and great players.

“Alex Samuel, who was calling the lineouts, spoke to Franco and said ‘should we throw a few front balls to get him into the game?’ Franco said something like ‘no, he will either sink or swim’. I was chucked in the deep end but I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

By the time Stephen’s 65-minute shift was up, his was the name on everyone’s lips. He nailed his lineout darts, made seven carries and 16 tackles, chopping down Leinster’s biggest trees and taking heavy fire on the gainline.

“My first carry, I got absolutely folded by Tom Clarkson,” he says.

“The biggest thing for me at Glasgow is watching the carriers we have here, Matt Fagerson, Jack Dempsey last year, even guys like Sione Tuipulotu and their footwork before contact is something I’ve looked at a lot, trying to put that defender in two minds whether you’re going to run it straight at him or get round him. I would definitely say I’ve got a long way to go to where I want to be.”

There was much excitement, firstly, over Stephen’s physical profile. He stands around 6ft 2ins; his 116kg heft is rare and precious in the Scottish player pool. Strength and conditioning specialist Luke O’Dea describes him as “an absolute monster… we just don’t get that here. When you do get it, it’s important you nurture it.” Shade Munro, Glasgow’s lead academy coach, would roar with satisfaction when he was set loose on the scrum machine. Stephen has been encouraged to maintain his mass while making best use of it. He has become nimbler and more explosive, beating eight defenders and making three line-breaks from 17 carries in just 96 minutes across Glasgow’s opening trio of URC fixtures. His lineout numbers remain solid with an 85% success rate. His tactical nous and decision-making are improving with each exposure to elite opposition.

“We do a lot of footwork in our carrying right at the start of our sessions, which is something I’ve never really done before,” he says. “That immediate change of direction and then dropping your body height and using your legs to punch through, is something I’ve incorporated through our S&C guys.

 

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“At the end of a session, doing changes of direction, running those tight lines I wouldn’t normally have trained before I came to Glasgow, is helping me open up new parts of my game.”

Fourteen months after his Warriors bow came the opportunity Stephen had dreamed of since his youngest days cavorting around the fields of home. Leading the Scotland team off the bus at Murrayfield, soaking in the noise and the colour and trotting on to the field as cap number 1240. A year and a half before, he’d been a punter watching Scotland grapple with the Springboks. Now he’d arrived in the Test arena.

“Freddy Douglas is one of my good mates and I was chatting to him about his debut against Portugal and as he’s describing it, you get that tingling,” Stephen says. “That feeling of going from being someone who has sat in the stands and watched the bus come in, watched the players get off, to actually being down there and hearing that noise and having that many people watching the team. That’s pretty special. It would have been cool to play against Argentina or South Africa on tour that month but to have my family and everyone there at Murrayfield made it extra special.”

Stephen is magnanimous about his game and how much growth is still to be done. He has started only five professional matches and played a grand total of 631 minutes. That, in itself, is tantalising. How good might he become? What heights could he scale? The way others – O’Dea, Munro, Townsend – talk about him is instructive. From the medieval surrounds of Barra Castle to the rugby ramparts of Murrayfield, the hype is justified.