Steffon Armitage

On the Promenade des Anglais, a huge curve of golden beach in Nice, where the English have been welcome ever since the days when Queen Victoria wintered there, Steffon Armitage is enjoying a homecoming to the city where he first fell love in with rugby.

Few places in France, especially those in the south, would have so welcomed the English as to name a spectacular 7km stretch of Mediterranean coastline after them, but Nice is a bit different. It’s a wonderful muddle of those that have influenced it over the years, from the visiting Brits, to the neighbouring Italians, and the many drawn to it for the coastline and the 300-plus days of sunshine it boasts. Queen Victoria undoubtedly loved the temperate climate, the Italian-influenced cuisine, the architecture, among other things, and the city clearly loved her back with her name readily linked to it, at every opportunity.

Not exactly royalty, other than perhaps to some of the more fervent fans from nearby Toulon, just an hour or so west along the Mediterranean coast, but basking in one of those 300 days of sunshine is Steffon Armitage. Yesterday, he played for his current club Stade Niçois in the third tier, losing 9-16 at home to Bourgoin-Jallieu, but they’re very much a work in progress and Steffon – as is de rigueur in these parts – did his bit for community spirit by sharing a glass or two of rosé with team-mates and fans until the early hours. And, despite those early hours being only just a few hours ago, he’s in remarkably fine fettle.  

Speaking fluent French as he orders coffee for us both, the 37-year-old Trinidad-born flanker couldn’t be more at home in this French city on the edge of Italy with the Alps to the north. “This is where I grew up from like ten to sixteen,” he says, as we meet at one of the cafes right on the Cote d’Azur sand. “We were a little bit further up in the mountains, but I played in Nice, so for me, it’s always been part of you, this is where I actually fell in love with rugby, and I’ve still got some of my best mates living here.

“When I was ten years old,” he continues, “they were in the Top 16, they were playing the Heineken Cup against Northampton. And I remember going to watch a game in a packed out stadium, 40,000 people, and I was ball boy.”

Things have changed: his Stade Niçois had pulled in a lively crowd of perhaps a couple of thousand the night before, but football is definitely king, with Nice in the top half of France’s Ligue 1 and regularly drawing crowds of 20,000 plus. “Back then rugby was way bigger than football,” he says. “But rugby was massive and now I’m just coming back here to try and get them back where they belong. Everything goes around in circles, and I want to be part of the history in bringing this city back up; it was an easy decision for me.”

His seemingly perfect French is due to his dad’s insistence on his children picking up the language when they were young. “We had no choice but to speak French, my old man threw us into a French school with no English speakers,” says Steffon. “I cried for a whole month and then learnt how to draw graffiti, so I became a good graffiti artist. But it [speaking French] came quickly to be honest; you’re like sponges when you’re young, and even by the end of the first playtime you’ve learnt every swear word possible.”

His journey back to Nice has had more than a few stops over the 21-year sabbatical. Even before he first came to Nice, he had gone from his birthplace of Trinidad aged six [he remembers little, aside from fifteen people in a three-bedroom house], to Richmond – where he played for the minis – before arriving in the Cote d’Azur. The family: mum Verna, dad John, older brother Bevon and younger brothers Guy and Joel, then moved from Nice to Brixham in Devon, with the other older brother, Delon, instead going to London Irish to start his professional life.  “I waited a year, went to Ivybridge College, and got signed to Sarries academy,” he says. “I was a scrum-half as a kid, or I was being Jonny Wilkinson at number ten – always thought I had a really good boot. And I also played full-back. It was only when I was in Nice the first time I played flanker, then in the centre. I was playing thirteen when I signed for Sarries, but they said, pretty much, ‘you’re like George Smith, you should play back row’. 

“Every now and then, I’d step in as a centre and they tried me at hooker once too,” he adds. “In fact Sarries, London Irish, England, they all tried and failed to get me to play hooker, but this face is not for playing hooker! The scrum goes down and its your head that hits the ground first... not my thing. I have a good throw though.”

Reunited with his brother at London Irish, Steffon played a key role as part of a golden generation with the likes of Jonathan Joseph, Anthony Watson, Nick Kennedy, Topsy Ojo, Sailosi Tagicakibau, and galvanised by Samoan centre Seilala Mapusua. “We had all the players, everyone loved being there, we came from fighting for relegation to being one of the top teams,” he says. “We lost the Premiership final [10-9, against Leicester, in 2009] with Jordan Crane scoring in the last five minutes. And it 100 per cent should never have been allowed, I tell him that all the time. But that was for me a massive highlight of the career, we didn’t win, but it made us as people, and as rugby players.”

The year before, they’d made history for the club in reaching the semi-finals of the Heineken Cup, losing narrowly 15-21 to Toulouse at Twickenham.

Steffon feels London Irish’s decision to release Mapusua in 2011 effectively broke up the band. “Me and Mapusua went first, then the year after Nick Kennedy, my brother, Elvis (Seveali’i], everyone started going, which was a shame because we had so much potential,” he says. “But certain decisions, I don’t really like going into it, but I think if they had kept Maps a lot of people would have stayed. He was the leader, one of the oldest, but everyone would back him for every single minute of every single game. He was a massive loss, and one of the downfalls of the clubs, but they’re coming back now, so that’s good.”

Unlike Delon, who was established in the England squad under Martin Johnson, Steffon had won just a handful of caps while at Irish. He’d made his debut in 2009 against Italy, then played in two Summer Tests against Argentina, followed by two substitute appearances in the 2010 Six Nations against Wales and Italy. “We went on tour [to Australia] after, and not trying to blow my own trumpet here, but I’d had the season of my career,” he explains. “I was meant to start the first Test against Australia and pretty much Martin Johnson told me he wanted to go for the experience of Lewis Moody. That hurt me; he’d played about 60 minutes in the whole year before the tour. For me, I felt ‘how am I ever going to get experience if you look at it that way?’.”

Was there any feedback? “He pretty much told me, I needed to get better,” he says. “And I was too complacent, being at London Irish. I knew every week, if I was fit, I was going to start. I know that’s a bad way to think, but I truly believed in myself, and I knew if I was going to become a better player I had to move. I couldn’t go to another club in England because at the time London Irish was a massive family for me, so it would feel like a betrayal to leave.

“It was tough,” he admits. “I had to speak to my wife, and obviously I was still under contract, but Philippe Saint-André [then coach of Toulon] got in touch, and I signed – although three weeks later Philippe took the France job.”

Not that the French coach had given him any guarantees with regards to  joining Toulon. “He said, ‘if you come over here you’re third choice flanker’, and I thought, ‘good challenge, let’s do it’. 

“In the changing room, we had George Smith, Joe van Niekerk, [Matt] Giteau, [Drew] Mitchell, [Mathieu] Bastareaud, the names go on: think of any rugby player in history, a legend, and they’d probably been through Toulon.

“Some of these guys I used to watch on TV, and you being a rugby fan, you dream of playing with them, or just to watch them play live. Every now and then you had to pinch yourself when they named the starting team and you were in with Bakkies Botha, Ali Williams, Chis Masui, Joe van Niekerk, Duane Vermeulen, Jonny Wilkinson... and Steffon Armitage. 

“Even though I’d been capped for England, I knew these guys had way more, so every game I had something to prove, to me. Bernard Laporte [the coach who succeeded Saint-André] used to just say, ‘go out and be yourself’,  but that was easy for him to say: these guys are World Cup winners, rock stars of rugby, you can’t just be average, you’ve got to do better than everyone else. 

“We also had an owner [Mourad Boudjellal] that meant at any moment you could be replaced: it was like baseball, you could come in and there’s an envelope saying you’re being transferred to somewhere else. It was pretty much like that, and he was capable of doing that, because so many people wanted to come to Toulon.” Did you see much of the owner? “More than we liked, put it that way,” he laughs. “He was a special guy, he brought that team together so I can’t say anything bad, I mean look at the power Toulon has got because of him. But he’s ruthless; if you’re not pulling your weight, he’ll get rid of you and bring someone else in.

“I think what I learnt from them,” he says of Toulon’s galacticos, “was that no matter what you’ve achieved in your career, you’re still a human being. You’re just a number, the name doesn’t matter. If someone needs help, they were the first to help, they made me a better player because they were willing to share their knowledge. 

“For me, Joe van Niekerk, was the nicest guy you’ll ever meet,” he says, singling out the biggest influence, “always there for the boys, he’ll put his body on the line for anyone, he kept me under his wing, he was like my older brother. 

“George Smith as well, he’s who I based my career as a flanker on – being the same height and way he plays rugby, I watched a lot of videos of him, and he was a massive factor in why I got to where I am today.”

Steffon had  arrived in Toulon with an injury, but once he’d rehabbed he didn’t take long to establish himself in the star-studded team. 

“Coming over and being told I was third choice, coming back from injury, I did my rehab, and my first game, I think Clermont, we lost at home, but after that game I knew this was where I belonged. 

“We lost but I didn’t feel out of my depth, I was challenging against my own backrows: ‘they’re no.1, they’re no.2, but I’ve got to be better’.”

The freedom given to the squad was key to its success, with Laporte opting for a collaborative approach with a squad full of World Cup winners. “Bernard let us coach ourselves,” explains Steffon. “It’s the best thing he did, because these guys were leaders, most of them had captained their countries, and he said ‘you are the ones on the pitch’.  Carl and Sebastien took the scrums, we had Ali Williams taking the lineouts, Jonny with the backs, and it was good because they adapted with the coaches, worked with them, we functioned really well, not too much coaching.

“But sometimes we needed structure,” he adds, “because sometimes it was like Barbarians rugby because that’s the players we had, we’d just get on there and see what happens, throw the ball around. That’s when we needed Bernard Laporte to say, ‘what the fuck are you doing’?”

Being a flanker, he also felt the presence of his opponents from the start. “They love to fight eh?” he says of the French forwards. “Just say every moment possible, if you get into a scrap they love that, especially when you’re a flanker – they love it when they get the opportunity to run up and down someone’s back and on their head, they took pleasure in doing that. There was intensity going into every single ruck, they took pride in hurting people.”

Stade Mayol on a match night, like many grounds in southern France, was unlike anything Steffon had witnessed in England. “Even on a Sunday night, the stadium would still be packed out,” he recalls. “I remember playing Clermont at the Stade Mayol, 9pm on a Sunday, and it’s rammed with kids running around. Surely these kids have got school tomorrow? But, rugby’s more important. 

“Walking out onto that pitch, it just gives you that...” he pauses. “I’ve always said rugby is 70 per cent the team, but 30 per cent is what the crowd brings you, that gives you that bit more. Everywhere in France you get that, it doesn’t matter where you are. You should see the Toulon team bus,” he say. “We used to turn up two and half hours before kick-off and there’d be 4,000 people waiting for the bus. You come in with your headphones on, and you’re trying to walk and be serious, trying to have a good stride,  but everyone’s slapping you, and it’s so cool, you never get that in England. It’s completely different, especially in this region, rugby is the main sport, they live for it.

“This is why we play rugby,” he says of the French crowds, “it’s not like football where you can’t enjoy it after the game, where they close everything. In France they’ll stay and have a drink – family, friends and supporters, they’ll keep going into the night – win, lose or draw.”

At Toulon he won three Heineken Cups, a Top 14 title and was named European Player of the Year. “There’s too many moments,” he admits, trying to single out one. “It was probably my first game when they announced I was at starting seven and in front of me was Carl Hayman and behind me was Bakkies. Me this short little dude from London Irish, and I had the least amount of international caps.

“Even playing for England [doesn’t match it],” he says. “I only got five caps, and never really thought I reached my potential with England. But coming on to that [Toulon] pitch with these guys, that’s the moment you think, ‘shit, I made it’. It’s something special and I’ll never forget it. Then to have Delon come over too, I’ve played thirteen years in my career with Delon always there. That’s a massive factor why I stayed as well, I wanted to stay and play with him.”

He admits too that having a chip on his shoulder is what drove him too success. “Yeah definitely,” he says. “My whole career has been like that, ‘too short’, ‘too fat’, ‘just not the right build’, but whatever they were saying, I was going to make it. Even when they were saying, ‘you’re not going to make it as a backrow, maybe a hooker’, I was so cocky I would’ve backed myself to make it.

“You need to though, in this sport,” he continues. “If you didn’t have a chip on your shoulder, you wouldn’t want to be there. You want to be better than these guys, and I mean some of them are in video games. 

“It’s not just being part of that team, but who you kept out of the team, it’s something to tell your kids – ‘yeah, I played with these guys, but I took the place of these guys’. Even though they’re my mates and achieved so much, I worked my bollocks off to get where I am, and to get there I had to beat these guys, and I could list them. 

“We had ten backrowers, all of them international, all of them more experienced, and I saw it as a challenge, it gave me that chip and made me want to fight more.”

Every rugby fan in England was calling for Steffon Armitage in 2015. And it seemed he was going to answer their call when Bath and Toulon negotiated a possible transfer ahead of the Rugby World Cup. “Ah, we’re getting into this conversation are we?” he says. “Everything got sorted to go back to Bath for the 2015 World Cup, everything was set. 

“We were playing in Toulouse and we’re on the bus and I got a phone call from Mike Ford saying, ‘everything’s been arranged, you’re coming to Bath tomorrow’. And I thought, ‘this is weird, nobody’s told me’, and then the president called me to the front of the bus, and said, ‘this is what’s happening, we’ve agreed this, we’re just working out the transfer fee’.”

The debate was over the length of time: Bath wanted him for three years, Toulon wanted a loan for six months. “They tried to put it on me to make the decision,” says Steffon, “but in that situation, I couldn’t have made that decision. I thought it was unfair to put this on me. If you want me, I’m quite happy to go back [to England] and fight for a place to play in the World Cup.”

With the discussions already taking place between the owners, Steffon wanted the negotiations, including the transfer fee, to get sorted at board level first. “I was pretty much, ‘I want you guys to sort your shit out and what’s going on, don’t get me involved in the contract and shit, don’t get me involved’.”

Nonetheless the call from Ford had made Steffon confident the two parties would agree a fee and quickly. “So, I called up my missus, and first I said, ‘I love you baby, quick thing... can you pack a bag for me as I’m flying to England tomorrow’. It was like baseball and I’d been drafted to Bath. 

“We go out and play the game, then all of a sudden, another phone call back on the bus, and they said I had to make that call [on going or staying].”

The sides couldn’t come to an agreement, and Steffon knew there was
inherent risk in leaving. “I wasn’t going to make the decision because, if I go back to Bath and it doesn’t work out ... for me Toulon was my home, if I’d left, he [Mourad] wouldn’t take me back. 

“At one point he was asking for a million, the biggest transfer fee in rugby,” continues Steffon, “but I didn’t want to be involved, I was very much, ‘you guys sort it out. I’m quite happy to go back and fight for a place, or stay in Toulon and win trophies.’ I wanted them to make the decision because either way I was happy. Coming over to France made me the player I am today. Staying would have been good, but going back to a World Cup would’ve been pretty cool too.

“I knew by being in France I was a better player, and I felt I was getting better and better. But for me, it was a tough moment, it went on for a couple of months, but then they brought in Sam Burgess. I didn’t make the plane.

“In the end, the president came up to me and said, ‘listen you’re not going, but how about a three-year extension?’. ‘Oh well, okay, why not?’ I’ve got no regrets about it, things happen for a reason.”

That Steffon would even have to leave what was the best club in Europe, where he was surrounded by greats, to play for England is something that he still questions. “Stuart Lancaster came over to France to see me in the hotel just before a game,” recalls Steffon. “And he was like ‘listen, you’ve only got one option, come back to England or you’re not going to play’. 

“So, I looked him dead in the eye and said ‘can you just tell me what do you think of me as a rugby player?’. And he said, ‘you’re the best number seven/eight at the moment’. Okay, so you’ve said that,  but you’ve given me one option which is come back to England or I’m not gonna play again.

“I could get to Twickenham quicker than those guys from Newcastle,” continues Steffon. “It takes me two hours and so if I’m getting better and better every time, why do you want to take that away? I’m the one who took the gamble. I didn’t know 100 per cent that was gonna work out for me. 

“And that’s the problem,” he continues, “some of the guys they don’t want to take that risk. Some say I did it for the money, but I didn’t go for the money. I went because Martin Johnson said I needed to improve as rugby player. People could talk as much as they want to talk about me chasing the money, staying in France because of the money, but I stayed in France because the two owners couldn’t come up with an agreement.”

He’s staying in France now because it’s home. “I think I’m French now,” he says. “Listen, look where we are, I can just jump on my scooter, come down to the beach and have a coffee. Italy is around the corner, the weather, even at Christmas time, is 20 degrees and you’re trying to cook a turkey in shorts and flip flops.”

Steffon’s slow return to Nice began when Toulon came to an end. “After we lost the [2016 Top 14] final in Barcelona, I had one more year but, for me, that was it after that game.  We lost, we shouldn’t have, but I cried, and I never really cry, but I just cried because I knew it was the time. I knew it was it was the time when Toulon would never be the same again. We’d spent four or five years at every final and I just needed something different and needed to find that hunger again, because I got to the same point as at London Irish, when I felt if I was fit, then I’ll be playing. And that hunger in the end just faded away.”

Despite an offer on the table from both Toulouse and Lyon, where Delon was heading, he instead went to Pau. “Carl [Hayman] was coaching and came calling,” he explains, “they were fighting relegation, and he came to the house and gave me the chat, and I was like, ‘do you know what, you’ve been my best mate for ten years, I’ll follow you’. Even though I got offered money to go to Toulouse and Lyon, I thought ‘let’s go and create history with Pau’ – I didn’t even know where Pau was.”

After three years with Pau, he joined Biarritz, another historic club and a chance to make history, which he did, scoring the winning kick in a penalty shoot-out in the promotion play-off. 

And then to Stade Niçois. “I think the potential for this club is huge,” he says. “Look where we are, people want to come here, fans or players. 

“It’s just we’ve got to do it on the pitch first. There’s quite a lot of people coming in trying to invest in the club, to try and make it bigger. They’ve got permission to make the stand even bigger, build hospitality, so everything’s coming along. We’ve got to give them a reason to want to do that and that means winning games and giving people a good picture of what’s to come.”

And no sign of retirement yet? “Nah, I still look 25,” he laughs, “although I feel about 40 today, but I’ll feel 30 tomorrow. These young boys keep me on my toes, I’ve still got a chip on my shoulder because these young boys are trying to take me out and I’m gonna prove to them it’s not gonna be easy. 

“The old man still got some energy, just put some oil in there in the morning, and I’m ready to go. This is my 21st season and I’ve only had a couple of injuries, so I’ve had one of the longest careers in rugby, so I can’t complain.”

Story by Alex Mead

Pictures by Mark Parren Taylor

This extract was taken from issue 20 of Rugby.
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