Dillyn Leyds: 'I was probably the main culprit... It was really tough'

Dillyn Leyds truly understood he wasn’t in Cape Town any longer when he first experienced the relative cold and dark of a La Rochelle winter in 2020.

“A Cape Town winter is nothing like it is over here,” the 32-year-old recalled. “Cape Town winters, you get a light cardigan – and maybe, every now and then, you put on a rain jacket.

“But winter came along and it was freezing. All of a sudden it was dark by 4pm and I’m thinking, ‘what have I done, here?’.”

Moving thousands of kilometres to a new country with a different culture and language is far from straightforward at the best of times. More than one family has struggled to get to grips with the new reality.

But Leyds’s early experiences of France and French rugby were made more difficult by history.

He had left South Africa in search of a new challenge in 2020, after five seasons with Stormers, when the world was in the grip of the Covid-19 pandemic.

BORDEAUX, FRANCE - Ronan O'Gara, Head Coach of La Rochelle talks with Dillyn Leyds prior the Heineken Cup Champions Cup semi final match between La Rochelle and Exeter Chiefs at Stade Matmut Atlantique on April 30, 2023 in Bordeaux, France. (Photo by Lionel Hahn/Getty Images)

France had lifted its first lockdown earlier in the year, but a second strict lockdown was introduced towards the end of October. Schools remained open under strict conditions, but bars and restaurants, cinemas and theatres shut down again, and people were stuck in their homes once more.

Top 14 matches, meanwhile, were played behind closed doors. Games were rescheduled as players and staff caught the virus and had to isolate. Leyds’s first couple of months in La Rochelle, he said, were ‘really hard’.

“I couldn’t really socialise with the team. It's basically just go to training and then go home. It was difficult to integrate into the culture and get to know the boys.”

Then that first winter came along.

To make matters more difficult, his then-fiancée could not travel with him because of strict Covid travel restrictions. Leyds said the powers that be at La Rochelle tried everything to get her over to France. But the forces of bureaucracy were immovable.

In the end, he said: “They just said to me, ‘Look, we’ll give you two weeks off’ – it was just before we started the Champions Cup [that season] – ‘you can go home and have a wedding, and that way your wife will be able to come over’.

La Rochelle's South African wing Dillyn Leyds (L) passes the ball to La Rochelle's English wing Jack Nowell l (R) during the French Top14 rugby union match between Stade Rochelais (La Rochelle) and Club Toulonnais (Toulon) at the Marcel-Deflandre Stadium in La Rochelle, western France, on September 8, 2024. (Photo by XAVIER LEOTY / AFP) (Photo by XAVIER LEOTY/AFP via Getty Images)

“That’s exactly what we did.

“My wife arranged everything within a couple of days. All I had to do was get on a flight to South Africa. We had our wedding, we got to spend a bit of time with family and friends – and the next week my wife was over here.”

There’s no doubt in Leyds’s mind – despite that difficult start – that moving to La Rochelle was the correct decision. “This is my fifth season now,” he said. “I’ve just had my little one born over here. My wife’s happy and we really have come to love the place.”

The club, he said, works hard to foster a family environment. “We’re lucky that the club puts a big emphasis on the family and you, as a player, being happy off the field. Hopefully that can translate to you being a better player and better results on it.”

In the five seasons since Leyds’s arrival, La Rochelle have twice won the Champions Cup, beating Leinster in the final each time, and reached the Top 14 final twice. Leyds has felt the family influence all the way.

“The club makes a massive effort to make sure the families get to travel as well and make sure that everyone’s got the correct visas or whatever.

“There’s flights organised, there’s hotels organised. It’s really good to be in a club where the families are heavily concerned and not a backup point to your career.”

Even so, with those two Top 14 final defeats – both against Toulouse, who also got the better of them in last season’s semi-finals – the sense of unfinished business about Stade Marcel Deflandre this season is palpable.

“At the beginning of the season, we went on a camp. It was good to get away and break down the season we’d had, but also to sit down as a group and discuss where we want to go this year and what we want to achieve.”

Racing's Fijian centre Josua Tuisova (L) vies with La Rochelle's South African wing Dillyn Leyds during the French Top14 rugby union match between Racing 92 and Stade Rochelais (La Rochelle) at the Dominique Duvauchelle stadium in Creteil on September 28, 2024. (Photo by Anne-Christine POUJOULAT / AFP) (Photo by ANNE-CHRISTINE POUJOULAT/AFP via Getty Images)

A first-ever Top 14 title is top of every player’s mind. “We want to be able to call ourselves champions of France. We were really close a couple of seasons ago. But close just doesn’t cut it.”

That was the 2022/23 final. La Rochelle led Toulouse 26-22, and had arguably been the slightly better side, before Romain Ntamack sliced through their shattered defence on halfway in the 78th minute and stood up Leyds en route to the line to take Toulouse into a 29-26 winning lead.

Even Toulouse coach Ugo Mola admitted at the time his Toulouse had “pulled off a little robbery” that night at Stade de France.

And it’s a painful memory for Leyds, who had a front row seat as Ntamack bore down. “I was probably the main culprit in that play of just thinking, ‘oh, we've got a minute left here to see it out’,” he said. “And, then, next minute I’ve got Ntamack running down at me.

“It was a really tough moment personally, but also just for the team because we were on the verge of something really special.”

Five games into the current Top 14 season and it’s fair to say La Rochelle have started well on their latest Brennus quest. Four wins, including three in a row for the first time in 17 months means they faced Bayonne in San Sebastien this weekend second in the table, level on points with leaders Bordeaux.

“Five points is always a good indicator,” Leyds said, “especially with how you get bonus points [in the Top 14], having to score three more tries than your opposition.”

Leyds kicked off the season at fullback, moving on to the wing when Brice Dulin returned from injury, and scored four tries in the first four matches, including a hat-trick against Pau on the third weekend, before being rested for last Saturday’s bonus-point 43-22 win over Lyon in front of the 95th capacity crowd in a row at Marcel Deflandre.

Despite the five points, despite the three wins in a row, head coach Ronan O’Gara wants more. “He's never happy,” Leyds smiled. “For him, that was 10 or 12 points too many for Lyon.

“He doesn't care about the 43 points [La Rochelle scored]. He says if we want to win championships, we can’t leak 20-odd points week-in, week-out.”

But Leyds said O’Gara is the type of coach players will run through walls for, or Emmanuel Meafou at least, despite throwing occasional public criticism bombs their way on more than one occasion.

“He always knows when to do it,” he said of some of O’Gara’s comments on his players. “That’s just the kind of coach he is – he knows his players really well and he knows who he’s able to do that with because he knows the reaction he’ll get.

(Photo by Ashley Vlotman/Gallo Images/Getty Images)

“Sometimes, if a coach comes hard at players, they might not get the reaction they want, and the player goes into his shell and backtracks a bit. But that’s the type of human being he is and the quality coach he is: he knows when to do it, to get the reaction he wants.

“He’s the kind of guy you want to go out there and play for. When a coach shows that much passion and that much gratitude and love for the club, as a player, you follow.

“He leads from the front. That’s why this playing group respects him so much. He’s a guy who’s obviously bought into the culture [of French rugby]. He knows how to get not just the foreigners going, but also the French boys going. And he understands how important it is to make sure that we’re not foreigners and French players – we’re all La Rochelle. We play for one club and we buy into one plan. I think that is really, really cool.”

Five rounds into Project Brennus 2025, La Rochelle look to be in a better place than they were last season, for all that they got to the semi-finals. But there are still 24 or 25 matches to go before one side of 14 lifts the famous shield.

Leyds has no illusions about the challenge ahead, and is looking shorter term for now. “The Top 14 season is long. We started really well and we’ve put ourselves in a position to pick up momentum and go into the November break, hopefully with a couple more good results behind us.”

Despite the realism, the ambition is just the same. “Being champions of France is our biggest goal.” If they reach their third final this season, maybe it will be the charm…