NOTES FROM BEHIND THE COUCH

Some much needed tidying up yesterday uprooted the programme from the first ever Saracens game at Allianz Park / StoneX Stadium against Cardiff Blues in January 2013.

Having being a season ticket holder until 2017, and writing for this site for a few years prior to that, it got me thinking about my journey watching Saracens. It was right back on 12 February 2006, a home defeat to Bath, and was an accessible introduction to the game as a whole, being very competitively priced. The referee’s calls flashing up on screen was a good touch as well.

It was chalk and cheese to the tribalism of football and unusual as an avowed Rugby League fan.  I probably did half of the home games through to 2009 - vividly remember the snow in the (shock?) Quarter Final win in 2008 versus Ospreys and then the Semi against Munster. By now I was watching games all over the place - on a run of eleven Heineken Cup finals from 2007 to 2017 and tried to pack in as many European games as possible. 

A £99 season ticket in the pivotal 2009/10 season was an absolute bargain with the Wembley games thrown in. There’d been a bit of disquiet about the loss of several players on the run up to that campaign. Results dramatically improved, though, despite a dull kicking dominated game especially in the first half season, though I didn’t have the tactical understanding then which I have now. However, as more of a follower than supporter, I started to drift away. By then, I’d nailed my colours to the Irish international mast and for the next eight years made bags of trips there. My background led to Munster and a role in the London based committee between 2010 and 2018 with some very interesting build ups when the sides faced each other.

Why the return then? Copthall is less than three miles from my house, hopefully remaining compliant for permitted exercise, so one winter evening in early 2013 I wandered up there through the mud. The now demolished swimming pool is where I went with school in the late 1980s and I remember a freezing fireworks display in the stadium in 1988 sitting on the open terrace where the East Stand is now. Barnet FC had talked about using the ground and indeed it had been used for non league football in the late 2000s by Kentish Town FC as well as the predecessor to London Broncos Rugby League in the early 1990s. So, clearly it’s somewhere I knew well and I took the plunge with a mini season ticket. 

As the stunning progress continued on and off the pitch, the rock bed was created for both club and international success, as the perfect embodiment of Nigel Wray’s enduring commitment and backing bore fruit. The plucky underdog of my early years had become an emerging and evolving powerhouse. I went all in. Who remembers the pizzas delivered to your seat? Perched on the running track behind the opposition, hence the alias, I’d generally be clutching one of the match day balls (I mean from the shop - not like in May 2016 against Newcastle when a ball went into touch and someone put it in their rucksack). Studying the game rather than making too much of a noise in the rain, I then started writing previews and reports for this site and taking some of the away European games in (I’ve only ever been to France for rugby ...). I was there for all of the big games but didn’t feel as connected as I should.

As the whisperings of the salary cap breach grew louder, and I found it hard to be as engaged as it became more like the football I’d initially sought to escape. The humility “value” and siege mentality became irritating at times and as for the swallow dive .... I drifted out in 2017, but a year later life changes meant I stopped watching rugby Union completely.

So what does it look like from the outside a couple of years on? Recent lockdown reading has included Win Forever by long-serving Seattle Seahawks NFL coach Pete Carroll. A lot of what I read resonated with what happened at Saracens in terms of creating a solid collective culture. In particular, the issue of player welfare. Crucially, I don’t remember Carroll mentioning money once.

The new sponsorship feels as valuable in reputational terms as it is financially particularly as Allianz walked away because of the salary cap fall out. That said, I don’t necessarily see the logic of automatically parachuting the club back, though clearly there is much uncertainty about the status of the Championship. There needs to be a clear sense of abiding by the rules.

My early lockdown morning runs took me past the new Saracens High School being built in Grahame Park which should help to enhance the club’s local identity. There doesn’t seem to be much support I can see locally despite the sign in Edgware Town Centre being safely in place (and undamaged) since 2013 but there hasn’t been a rugby club here since the 1930s, unlike the two either side of the StoneX.

It’s a moot point at the moment as there’s no games to watch in person but my interest in the game has returned. For now, it’s solo kicking and running training in the fields of Copthall, as I wait for Tag Rugby to return, and inflating those match day balls.