England stars Maro Itoje and Elliot Daly have told how a crisis meeting in a pub on Saracens’ darkest day saved the club from falling apart.
The pair play for the biggest prize in English club rugby on Saturday when they line up against Leicester in the Premiership Final at Twickenham.
But rewind two years to when the Londoners were kicked out of the top flight in disgrace for salary cap breaches and their star-studded squad faced being broken up.
Daly revealed: “We met in a pub down the road when it all started kicking off. All the senior players were there and we sat in a room.
“We didn’t really know what to say at the start because it was a really difficult situation to deal with.
“We realised we needed to get the club back to where it belongs but we still wanted to play for England. So there was a hard chat with everyone.”
As they sat in The Wicked Lady near Harpenden, team boss Mark McCall made the call to Eddie Jones that would prove so significant.
He asked the England boss straight whether Itoje, Daly, Owen Farrell, Jamie George and the Vunipola brothers needed to jump ship to keep their Test careers alive.
"Eddie was brilliant,” said Daly. “He said that if we are still performing we will be in camp and up for consideration.”
The players decided there and then to stay and, according to Daly, made a pledge to one another.
“We said ‘we are staying here and we are getting us back up - and then we will go for it next year’.”
Itoje admits it was a “tumultuous” time but insisted that even faced with a year in the Championship, he saw Saracens as the best place for him to be.
“I knew this was where I wanted to be, I knew Saracens would be back competing for things,” he said.
“Despite relegation, and no-one really wants to play in the Championship, I felt Saracens was the environment where I could achieve all of my goals.”
