It has been a gruelling summer for Scotland’s World Cup hopefuls and Kyle Steyn – speaking after his two tries in a man-of-the-match performance against France on Saturday night – was looking forward to a few days’ downtime.
He was planning to play some golf a which he hoped would help keep his mind off the phone call he is expecting from his boss – because this won’t be any old work communication, it will be Scotland head coach Gregor Townsend with news of his final squad selection for next month’s World Cup in France.
There are currently 37 players in contention and Townsend was hoping to finalise his final 33 for the tournament yesterday afternoon or today at the very latest, with the selection to be publicly announced tomorrow morning.
Steyn – who is predominantly a winger but comfortable at outside-centre if required – was a near certainty to make the cut even before his weekend heroics. Logic dictates that all five back-three players in the wider training squad – Darcy Graham, Duhan van der Merwe, Blair Kinghorn, Ollie Smith and Steyn – are set to be named. But the 29-year-old won’t take anything for granted until he hears it from the horse’s mouth.
“We have some days off and I am going to play golf and try and get my mind away from it,” said Steyn, who is initially from South Africa and qualifies to play for Scotland through his Glaswegian mother.
“I’m not sure where we will play but probably Cameron House, we have memberships there, and the phone will ring at some stage. I am sure my heartbeat will go up when I answer, and fingers crossed it is good news.
“The selection thing is a little bit unspoken within the squad,” he continued, “Everybody knows it’s coming, it is the nature of the game, and you are analysing all the time – but putting it at the forefront of your mind only detriments you and that is where this group is really good.
“Everybody knows what is going on and we are all there to help each other. The warm-up Test matches are a good distraction because you have to just focus on the game.”
Of course, making the 33 and making the match-day squad for the big games are two entirely different things, and Steyn knows that he is going to have to keep pushing hard in both training and Scotland’s final warm-up match against Georgia on Saturday 26th August if he is going to push his way ahead of Graham (19 tries in 35 Test matches) and van der Merwe (18 tries in 30 Test matches) as a starting winger for the shodowns against South Africa in Marseilles at the start of the pool stage on 10th September and Ireland in Paris at the end of the pool stage on 7th October.
“The way they have been playing the last couple of weeks speaks for itself,” acknowledged Steyn, whose brace on Saturday took his tally to eight tries in 12 matches. “I knew I had to put in a big performance when I got a chance against France to make it competitive, so I’m chuffed I was able to do that.”
“I am a wee bit behind those guys in terms of caps, but that is eight from 12 now so if I can keep my head down and keep that going I won't complain.”
Despite a highly encouraging all-round team effort, Scotland ended up losing 30-27 on Saturday night, which was a disappointment but perhaps a positive thing in the longer run.
“It was a hell of an atmosphere [against France],” Steyn said. “It [Stade Geoffrey-Guichard] is a great place to play. We were chuffed with the first half. Given the circumstances, I thought we weathered the storm pretty well and got off to a good start, having not really done that against Italy or in the first France game.
“It was just those five minutes at the start of the second half that let us down. After that, we were buzzing with how we fought back and stuck together and kept going. It shows that we are up there, and we know that we can compete.
“It gives us that belief, but it’s also quite good that we still have that bit of hunger going into South Africa where we want to go into another big game and finish it off.”
Before that Scotland will play that final warm-up match against Georgia at Murrayfield in two weekends’ time. He’d certainly welcome the opportunity of another hit-out.
“The way we are performing later in matches shows that we are really fit at the moment,” he concluded. “But it is more than that. We are starting to execute at those crucial times in games, too, which gives us a lot of belief. Losing and not being able to get over the line means we still have a lot to prove, which is the way we want it to be at this stage.”
