April can be the cruellest month for one Premiership club, the harbinger of winter rather than summer. As Bob Casey looks out on to the 63 acres of an old golf course that has been turned into London Irish’s Hazelwood headquarters in Sunbury, a £12m investment designed to make the club one of the most successful in Europe, and is asked whether relegation would mark the end of the dream, his response is that it would only delay it.
Irish have propped up the Premiership for most of the season, and finished in the bottom four in the three previous campaigns, during which time the Rugby Football Union threatened to withdraw the club’s academy licence because underfunding meant it was not being run efficiently. Money is no longer an issue after a takeover at the end of 2013 but a steady decline resulted in players of the quality of this year’s England grand slam winners Anthony Watson and Jonathan Joseph leaving to enhance their international ambitions, along with the Armitage brothers, Alex Corbisiero, Marland Yarde and Jamie Gibson. Meanwhile, club stalwarts such as Casey, the club’s captain when they played Leicester in the 2009 Premiership final and against Toulouse the previous year in the Heineken Cup semi-final, retired.
“We are, to use an American term, a losing franchise and we have to turn it around,” says Casey, who became London Irish’s chief executive in June last year. “It takes time. We have only won 30% of our Premiership matches in the last four seasons and we have four matches left to avoid relegation. We are not where we would like to be but there is a clear vision and commitment from the owners who saved the club. I knew what a challenge this job would be but it is a special club. You get setbacks on the way but we have really good people here who are prepared to turn London Irish round. Relegation is not part of the plan: it would not be the end of the world but I believe we will stay up.”
London Irish are at home to Sale on Saturday, a fixture they have not lost since 2006 when they finished third in the Premiership, and then, after a break for the European Challenge Cup where they face Harlequins in the quarter-finals, they travel to Newcastle, the one other club stuck in the relegation quicksand now that Worcester have scrambled to almost certain safety. The Exiles’ only away league victory in the past 18 months was at doomed London Welsh in 2015.
“Both sides know how huge a game that will be,” says London Irish’s former England wing, Topsy Ojo, the longest-serving player at the club along with his fellow international David Paice, having joined in 2003. “It is all about results now and holding your nerve under pressure. We are in a similar position to when I arrived, at the wrong end of the table, but we then had a group of talented players emerging from the academy and within a few years we were playing in finals. I feel it is the same now: we are not that far away and have to start taking the chances we create.”
It is the time of year when the relegation issue is debated, although the new agreement being negotiated by leading clubs and the Rugby Football Union will not end it. As the financial gap between the top flight and the Championship grows ever wider, so the prospects of the vast majority of the clubs in the second tier making even a ripple in the Premiership recedes, as London Welsh found last season when they lost every game and finished with one point.
“As the chief executive of the club currently at the bottom of the Premiership, I will have a certain view,” Casey says. “If you want to grow a sport, the franchise model of the United States shows the way: security opens you up to more investment. We have expanded our business and there is a personal side to relegation, the potential changes in staff should you go down. Not many clubs could take a game to New York and get a 14,500 crowd. St Patrick’s Day was the first themed match in the Premiership more than 15 years ago: as a brand and as a club we believe the Premiership is a better place with us but that does not give us a right to be there; we have to earn it. We are determined to do that over the next four cup finals.”
Irish picked up only their second bonus point of the season in the defeat by Worcester last weekend but dropped passes cost them three tries as if the threat of relegation and what it would mean was getting to the players. “We are professionals who understand what is at stake and what the consequences could be,” Ojo adds, “but our responsibility is to focus on what we need to do to win our remaining games; thinking too much about the what ifs detracts from the task in hand. We know how crucial these games are and if our minds are elsewhere, it makes the job infinitely more difficult. For me personally, relegation would hurt deeply. It would be huge: as someone who has been here so long, I want to take responsibility to do all I can to make sure it does not happen. I love the club and we want us to continue being part of the country’s elite.”
Irish may be struggling in the Premiership but they are the league’s academy champions two years after their licence was under threat, clinching the title in an unbeaten campaign against Gloucester in February. “We have some excellent players coming through,” says Nick Kennedy, the former England lock who is the club’s academy director working with two other former players at the club, Declan Danaher and Paul Hodgson. The trio made more than 700 appearances for the Exiles between them and are steeping their charges in the ethos of one of seven clubs who have been ever-present in the Premiership era.
“I was here as a player for 13 years, Paul for 10 and Declan spent his entire playing career with the club. We not only want to bring players through who are intelligent and skilful but who are also passionate about playing for London Irish. I do not want the club to emulate what we did a few years ago because we did not win anything. I said to Bob two years ago that we should not talk about the glory days because there was no proper glory. We were in a few finals and semi-finals but I am desperate to be part of a winning club and have a trophy cabinet with something in it. That’s why we work so hard at the academy to make sure it will happen in the future and I can see it.
“It was great to achievement win the Premiership final with the under-18s and it gives you a thirst for more, but it is a slow process. We were under-funded for years and nearly lost our licence but the current owners are committed to the academy and our money is ring-fenced. I was involved in two relegation battles when I was here and you learn a lot about the people you are with and how to cope with proper pressure. We could have gone down on the last day of the season one year: you talk about the pressure of winning a trophy but when you have the pressure of jobs on your shoulders, that is real pressure. I hope it affects performances in a good way, players gathering motivation where they can. I will have a chat one-on-one with a few of the guys about my experiences. I will do everything I can to help out in every possible way.”
Irish this week signed four players from Premiership clubs, a statement that they will not be going gently into the night. Ojo points out that Hazelwood, a Tardis-like complex comprising five rugby pitches, a gym, office complex, function rooms and a bar at the end of a long driveway off a main road, was light years away from their old base at The Avenue nearby. “What I love about this place is that we are all under one roof trying to create a one-club mentality where we all have our part to play to get us up the table,” Casey says. “The players have impressed me in a difficult season and have stayed together with the management group. When I retired a few years ago, we lost 30 players in two seasons, many of them guys who were steeped in the culture of London Irish. We have to find that again and we are. This club is not afraid of a good scrap; we stay together.”
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