INSIDER: Frans Steyn's stellar Bok career that could have gone much further

When Frans Steyn runs out of the tunnel at Kings Park wearing the No 10 on Saturday he will be within a few hundred metres of the spot where he unwittingly engineered the first big breakthrough moment of his rugby career.

It was 2006, in other words 16 years ago. Steyn was then just 19 and an attendee at the Sharks Academy. The product of the Grey College rugby factory and the farming community near Aliwal North in the Eastern Cape was just having fun with fellow Academy players on one of the Kings Park outerfields used for training. He was testing out his skill set with his running and kicking.

The Sharks senior team was training on the field next to the one where the academy players were training, but Steyn wouldn’t have been too mindful of that. He was just doing his thing as a young, carefree player.

But while doing it, he happened to be spotted by the then Sharks senior coach, Dick Muir. And that was when his life changed and he hit the long road that has brought him to the point where he starts Saturday’s Castle Lager Rugby Championship decider against Argentina at his old rugby spiritual home as a two time World Cup winner.

“I spotted Frans while he was at the Sharks Academy. He was playing on the field next where the main team was training, Kings Park 2. They were all youngsters and I didn’t know that much about them but I spotted this guy who just stood out to me immediately as a sublime talent,” recalls Muir.

“He was running and picking up the ball with one hand, and then booting it the length of the field. Then he would run back to his position and do it all over again. Well, I immediately wanted him at my practice.”

THEY THOUGHT HE WAS TOO YOUNG

Muir initially encountered opposition from the Academy coaches when he expressed a desire to get Steyn immediately involved in senior provincial rugby.

“Swys de Bruyn was actually the Academy coach at the time, and when I went over to enquire who the young player was, I was told that he was prodigiously talented but too young. I was told he’s only 19, let’s give him more time. But I was adamant. I said, he must come through now, he’s ready.”

The rest, as they say, is history. Muir approached the respectful youngster, who he says was confident but also very polite, and drew him into his training sessions.

“What I recall is that he had no fear of the occasion, and while he didn’t get ahead of himself, and everything was “ja oom” and “nee oom”, he also wasn’t scared of making the step up. We selected him on the bench for a game against Western Province, with Brent Russell playing flyhalf. That was going to be how we intended easing Frans into senior provincial rugby.

“However, on the day of the game rain was threatening, and the forecast was particularly dire for match time. It was a Friday night Currie Cup game. Sometime before lunch I started thinking they would be the ideal conditions for Frans’ playing style, his physical presence and his big boot. So I started hatching a plan. I spoke to Brent and asked if he’d be happy to step back to let Frans wear the No 10. He said he was. I wanted to see if we could play a different game on the day to what we had intended playing.

“So Frans ended up starting, and it did end up pouring with rain. He had an absolute blinder and completely controlled the match in the wet conditions. From what I recall, he was the man of the match, and our match winner. From there it was one way and that was up for Frans, and two or three weeks later Jake (White) called him into the Springbok squad, where he made his international debut as a 19 year old on the end of year tour.”

SEISMIC INTRODUCTION TO TEST LEVEL

Steyn’s introduction to test match rugby was every bit as seismic as his arrival on the provincial stage. The first game he played didn’t go well for his team. He was part of a mix-and-match team that White selected to start that 2006 tour against Ireland at what was then still Landsdowne Road.

The Boks weren’t wearing the traditional green and gold jerseys that night, but a checked jersey that was similar to the one that was worn by Paul Roos’ team, the first South African touring team to be known as Springboks, on the first tour to the British Isles back in 1906. The game was a commemoration of the 100 year centenary of the Bok emblem and of Bok tours of the northern hemisphere.

The South Africans were outplayed that night but there was one player who emerged with some credit. It was Steyn playing on the wing. A week later he was even better as the Boks lost a close game to the then World Cup champions England at Twickenham. It was a two test series, and the Boks levelled the series a week later with the 19-year-old Steyn being a standout at fullback.

RECOVERED WELL FROM THAT SUPER RUGBY FINAL BLIP

From there it was onwards to World Cup glory, but first came a little blip that might have ruined another player. Steyn was part of the Sharks team that played the Vodacom Bulls in the 2007 Super Rugby final in front of a packed to the rafters Kings Park. With a few minutes to go, it appeared the Sharks were on their way to an historic victory when reserve lock Albert van den Berg dotted down for a try that put the Sharks six points ahead.

The conversion was a relatively easy one, and the raising of the flags appeared inevitable and with it the Sharks being confirmed as South Africa’s first Super Rugby champions. Indeed, as Muir and his former assistant John Plumtree often recount it, they kissed the money. They were hugging each other in the coaching box exclaiming words to the effect of: “I can’t believe this, we’ve just won the Super 14”.

Only the game wasn’t over. The youthful Steyn, in his eagerness to be part of history, decided to take the kick. He rushed it. The kick was missed. The Bulls were still in range. Amidst a surreal silence, Bryan Habana surged through a gap that opened in the Sharks defence and scored in a position where the winning conversion for the Bulls couldn’t be missed.

AJ EXPLAINS HIS DECISION

It was a moment that AJ Venter, who was the captain of the Sharks at the time because the starting skipper John Smit was by then off the field watching from the sidelines, has never forgotten.

“Percy Montgomery was off the field at the time, but Butch was on the field, and he was better than Frans at short kicks,” recalled Venter in an interview I did with him in 2019.

“I’ve never told my side of the story before, and I know John (Smit) said in his book that it was incumbent upon me to take the ball away from Francois and give the ball to Butch and to tell Frans that it wasn’t his kick to take. And maybe he was right that it was my responsibility. But Frans was a very eager boy, and that was what made him such a great player.

“I remember thinking in the moment ‘this is not supposed to be Frans’ kick’. But I also remember in that moment seeing how excited he was at having the opportunity to contribute to what would have been an historic victory. I literally then found myself thinking ‘I cannot take that ball away from this kid, this is his moment’. I thought I should just let it be and I walked away.

"I knew what I had to do. But when he just ran up and took the tee I remember thinking ‘it is what it is’.”

It cost Muir the chance to become the first South African coach to lift the Super Rugby trophy, and who knows, maybe history would have changed had that been the case as he might have secured the Springbok job either in that following year, when Peter de Villiers was appointed, or four years after that when Heyneke Meyer took over the reins.

“Frans had experienced a sudden rise to fame. He was always ready to play, he never feared the occasion, he just stepped up into the fold and played as if he’d been playing senior rugby for years,” says Muir.

“He worked hard, but he wasn’t one of those guys who worked himself to death. He was just naturally gifted, and a naturally talented ball player. At school he would have played touch rugby all day, and then gone on to kick. And he was versatile, that was one of his biggest things. He was so versatile that you could play him anywhere in the backline. That was his big strength and I gather it obviously still is for the Springbok coaches.

“But he was also very enthusiastic. There was history to be made on several levels in that 2007, and he was enthusiastic and eager to be part of it. He backed himself and rushed the kick. That was something we had to deal with as a team. My take on it was that he backed himself to do it. That it didn’t go over wasn’t his fault, it was a team decision.

“Butch James was one of the senior players on the field at that moment. She should probably have taken the kick, told Frans he had it covered. But as a collective we allowed him to kick. That was the way it was with our culture in the team. It was never a case of strictly this person had to fill a specific role.”

Muir said that Steyn quickly parked it and there were no ramifications for him, and neither did he ever carry any hangover from the incident. Indeed, just three weeks later he was the Springbok hero when he kicked two brilliant drop-goals to clinch the Boks a thrilling come from behind win over the Wallabies in Cape Town.

“That was the kind of player he was,” says Muir, “he just had a freaky ability to conjure up almost anything and it frequently made him a match winner.”

WHY BECOMING KNOWN AS ENFANT TERRIBLE WAS UNFAIR

Unfortunately there was a period in Steyn’s career where he earned himself a reputation as being the enfant terrible of South African rugby, but Muir feels it was wrong to blame it on Steyn and box him as a trouble kid.

“Frans was just wanting to play rugby, but unfortunately he had other influences around him that made it hard and he became the subject of a tug of war that made him look like something he wasn’t,” said the former Sharks head coach and Springbok assistant.

Muir didn’t elaborate, but the Bok head coach at the time when Steyn’s clashes with SA Rugby were making headlines, De Villiers, wrote in his book about the influence both Steyn’s stepfather and agent had on him. There were issues over what position he played that weren’t necessarily a concern to Steyn himself. Muir reckoned he was just always eager to play. And the whole issue might have been well summed up by Steyn in a press conference when he returned to the team from French club rugby after one of the controversies had interrupted his international career back in 2010.

“How did I get to be here (with the Boks) this time? I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore,” he responded when asked about the situation that had conspired to get him reunited with his old teammates.

“The South African Rugby Union spoke to the club, I got a ticket and flew here on Sunday and that is all I know and want to know. I just want to play the game, and to get the green and gold jersey back is fantastic.

“Being away makes you realise how much you want to play for your country and what an honour it is.”

As was written on supersport.com at the time, Steyn was emphatic that he did not want to be the middle man anymore in the ongoing drama which has also involved national coach De Villiers, Steyn’s agent and the officials at his French club, Racing Metro.

“I suppose at 23 now and having been on my own in France now for a while I have done some growing up. And the one thing I have realised is that I must not be the middle man in the drama over whether or not I should be with the Boks. It’s not my fight. I am a professional rugby player and it is hard enough having to focus on doing that job to the best of my ability without getting involved in off-field stuff.”

ONE OF DIV’S REGRETS

It’s sad though that Steyn should have had his career interrupted in that way, and the spat that kept him out was one of the former Bok coach De Villiers’ biggest regrets.

“I always saw Frans as someone who could end up playing 150 to 200 games for his country, but sadly that is not going to happen,” said De Villiers at the time he was writing his autobiography, Politically Incorrect.

It hasn’t happened, and although Steyn’s international career started 16 years ago, he is still around 20 games short of entering the centurion club when it comes to caps. Given how influential he was as a player, it is possible to reflect now with some regret on not only what Steyn missed out on, but also what his country missed out on.

He is contributing now though, and ask anyone in the Bok team and they will tell you that there is no better team man than Frans Steyn. And at the age of 35 he has another crucial role to play for his nation on Saturday.