The explosive way Kyle Steyn both started and finished the move that put Glasgow Warriors in control of Saturday’s meeting with his fellow South Africans offered reassurance that cover remains at outside centre in the collected absences of the trio of international players who began the season competing for the spot.
Ahead of Saturday’s Champions Cup visit to Saracens the injuries to Huw Jones and Nick Grigg could have made the decision to release Alex Dunbar to Newcastle look ill-judged, but Scottish-qualified Steyn has seized his chance since it was announced a month ago that he had signed with Glasgow, to the extent that he was called into the Scotland training squad a fortnight ago.
The running lines he selected in the course of that move which initially saw him blast through a gap in the middle of the pitch to carve open the Cheetahs defence then, after his colleagues had maintained the momentum, did so again at close quarters, to score, spoke to a knack of being in the right place at the right time that is becoming a trademark.
Just as he was on hand, having a coffee in bed on what he thought was going to be a rare lazy day off when that call from the Scotland camp came days before the national team’s Six Nations closer against England, so there was more than a bit of good fortune about the way he got his chance to capitalise on being dual-qualified.
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The accepted version of that story, as reported by Dave Rennie, the Warriors head coach, had been that he was discovered by Scott Johnson, the SRU director of rugby whose approach to player development has seen Scotland become the most reliant of the world’s leading nations on imported talent. Instead, though, it seems that the 25-year-old really owes his opportunity to a sponsor who knew talent when he saw it.
“Actually it is quite a funny story,” Steyn reported.
“Gregor (Townsend) said when he spoke to me that he was out with Glasgow last year when they played the Cheetahs and it was someone from Guinness who was handing out the man of the match award who knew that I was Scottish qualified and he mentioned it to Gregor.
“Gregor came back and passed it on to Scott Johnson and I suppose they had a look at my clips, spoke to my agent.
“Apparently it was somebody who knew my dad, a mate of my dad and he obviously knew that I was playing only an hour from Bloemfontein, where that game was, playing for Griquas in the Currie Cup."
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Success has a thousand fathers, while failure is an orphan as the old saw goes, but it is actually to his Scots-born mum that Steyn owes the real debt since at the age of 25 he was unlikely to be picked up at Super Rugby level in South Africa given the proliferation of talent its vastly superior development systems produce year-on-year, but was always aware of his options after deciding to get an education.
“The plan was definitely to get over here if I could but when I was younger I did not know how to make that connection, I did not really have any contacts, I didn't have an agent,” he explained.
“In South Africa, the Varsity Cup gets a lot of coverage and a lot of traction so I thought I was killing two birds with one stone. I thought I could get a degree, hopefully get it done early and on time and have the freedom to focus on rugby.”
There is no question as to what has his full attention now, however and with Rennie indicating that he is in contention to play as both a winger and centre, admits that trying to help Glasgow make a Champions Cup breakthrough would be the biggest game of his life.
“I’m sure it would be,” he agreed.
“The intensity and the magnitude of the occasion I think it will and I think the hunger that’s going on up here to go down there and get the win, it’s building for an epic clash.
“Saracens away is a huge game. We had a really good start to the game down there last time and it was sort of just the last 20 minutes that got us, so the boys know exactly what to expect… there’s a big, big week ahead.”
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