Steyn targets Scotland’s summer tour
Glasgow Warriors centre Kyle Steyn is desperate to resurrect his international career after fighting back from a horror hamstring injury.
The Rainbow Cup has hardly been greeted with universal love by the great and good of rugby but for Kyle Steyn, there is no better competition.
The Glasgow Warriors player lostayearofhiscareertoacombinationoflockdownandaparticularly nasty injury in which hishamstringwastorncleanoff the bone.
Theroadtorecoveryhasbeen long and rocky and involved a recurrence of the injury three weeks before he was due to return to action.
The comeback eventually came in straitened circumstances in Italy last month as the Warriors slumped to an ignominious 46-19 defeat at the hands of Benetton.
It was a desperately disappointing result for Glasgow butatleaststeyncamethrough unscathedandthecentre-cumwingisnowchampingatthebit to be involved in Friday night’s inter-city derby against Edinburgh at Scotstoun.
“The Rainbow Cup is the best tournament in the world if you askme!”hesaidwithachuckle.
“Every time there were reports coming out that the South African teams weren’t coming I thought it was going to be canned, and I was thinking‘please,pleasedonotletthat happen’.”
Fortunately for Steyn, the competition is going ahead, even though the South African sides are no longer coming to Europe and will instead stay at home and play each other.
The Pro14 clubs will do likewise, meaning there are now two tournaments with little to spice them up. Not that Steyn minds.
“It’s come at a good time. It’s the end of a long season and I feeli’vegotanimportantroleto play. I’ve got a lot of fresh, bundled up energy that needs to be spent.”
Steyn hopes to use the games to catch the eye of the Scotland selectors ahead of the summer tour to Romania and Georgia. Having made his international debut as a replacement against France in the 2020 Six Nations, he saw his chances of a second cap thwarted when the game againstwaleswascalledoffjust before lockdown.
“I can still remember being on the bus on the way to the captain’s run in Cardiff for that game that for some reason we thought was still going to go ahead. It was gutting that it didn’t. It was frustrating.”
Thebrieftasteofinternational rugbyhaswhethisappetiteand he wants some more.
“I would absolutely love to be on the summer tour,” he said. “I’m very aware of the circumstancesi’minandithinkit’sjust really important for me to put myheaddowninthesenextfew games and play as well as I can andhelpglasgowplayaswellas theycanandseewhatcomesoff the back of that.”
Steyn first tore his hamstring at the beginning of August, two weeksbeforeglasgowweredue to play Edinburgh in the first game back. “I was sprinting at full speed in training and the hammyjustwent,offthebone,” he explained. “I went down and had the surgery. That was supposed to put me back ahead of the first European window in the beginning of December. That would have been 16 weeks, and I got to 13 weeks and I was out doing a rehab run, turned the corner and it just went again. I could feel it pop.
“The reasons for it happening we genuinely don’t know. I was running at about 57 per cent when it went again. The thinking there is that it was going togoatsomestageagain. I had to take that on the chin. Because of that it turned from 16 weeks to 24 weeks.
“The mental side of it was tougher. Especially at the beginning because to start with they kept the injured boys separate from the main squad to try and really keep the bubble a bubble. I found that really tough. One of the big reasonsidothisisbecauseigetthe chance to come to work with 50ofmymatesandbeoutthere on the pitch. That was taken away very quickly. Then again the flipside is I was still luckier than most. As a whole on a globalscaleofwhatpeoplewent through during the pandemic I was still very, very lucky, much luckier than most people.”
The long-awaited return to action in Treviso was disappointing in terms of the result but Steyn was pleased to come through unscathed.
“To be honest the toughest part of it was my lungs, getting acclimatised. It felt like I hadn’t played a game in a year. It felt like I was running around with a trailer of lead behind me,” he said.
“One of the positives of that Treviso game is that I got to tick off a lot of those mental ‘what if’ kind of things. I’d spent five months wondering if I can sprintagain.canitakecontact? Will it all be the same? So from that point of view it was great to get out and put that behind me and get over that hurdle.”
Meanwhile,richardcockerill hasshotdownsuggestionsthat Rory Sutherland could leave Edinburgh to join Worcester Warriors in the summer.
The capital club will lose Duhan van der Merwe to the English Premiership side in the close season but Sutherland, below, will not be following the winger south, according to the Edinburgh head coach.
“Rory is under contract until theendofnextseasonandthat’s it,”saidcockerill,respondingto a weekend report.
“He won’t be released from his contract. He’s an Edinburgh player until his contract runs out and from an Edinburgh and Scotland point of view we’d like to keep him long-term. It is as simple as that really – there is no truth in that whatsoever.”
Sutherland is currently sidelinedwithashoulderinjurysustained in Scotland’s Six Nations win over France in Paris in March. Cockerill said he was making good progress but his hopes of selection for the Lions’ summer tour of South Africa were in the balance. “If selected,itwillbetight,”saidtheedinburgh coach. The Lions squad will be named tomorrow.