Freddie Steward: ‘I love a challenge. It’s about not being scared of failing’

The latest census data reveals there has been a 9% spike in Australia’s population since England last toured here in 2016. It is a significant rise but still less steep than Freddie Steward’s career graph over the same period. As recently as six years ago the Leicester full-back was a bit-part member of Tigers age-grade academy side and had absolutely no clue how far rugby would take him.

Suddenly here he is, still only 21, preparing to play his first Test in the southern hemisphere having recently been named England’s player of the year. When a high bomb is hoisted his way there are few better equipped to defuse the aerial danger. Is it a bird or is it a plane? In a land that reveres its sky-scraping AFL footballers the soaring Steward, all 6ft 5in of him, could probably do a decent job for Essendon or Collingwood.

He certainly has the right genes for international high society. There is a lot of tall timber in his father Ben’s family tree while his elder brother Harry is another 6ft 7in beanpole. His maternal grandfather, Gabriel Bliss, was once a goalkeeper for Cambridge United when he was not working on the family farm. Stitch it all together and you have a towering modern full-back not dissimilar to the former Wallaby No 15 Chris Latham.

Sitting in the lunchtime sunshine at a local Perth bowling green, his bucket hands look big enough to accommodate two bowls each. Perhaps Steward’s key attribute, though, is the inner drive that has propelled him out of rural Norfolk and into the England squad. A fear of potential failure undermines so many fledgling careers but not in his case. “A lot of people when they hit a roadblock or an obstacle they go into their shells. They don’t want to risk it or figure out a solution to