Saracens v London Welsh Preview - Part 2

By Mark W-J
August 17 2009

Sadly for the self-styled ‘Fez-heads’ there has been no sniff of silverware since.  Their best player of recent vintage was undoubtedly one whose arrival passed unnoticed – Richard Hill, who came from Salisbury in 1993 and retired last year as a World Cup winner and Lions legend.  During his time at the club the number of ‘marquee’ signings – including Tim Horan, Thomas Castaignede, Raphael Ibanez, Cobus Visagie, Taine Randell, Brent Russell and Andy Farrell – is almost matched by the number of head coaches who have come and gone since that Twickenham triumph.  Pienaar, Buck Shelford, Rod Kafer, Steve Diamond, Mike Ford, Alan Gaffney, Eddie Jones and now Brendan Venter have all found themselves in the hot seat for short or shorter periods.

Of course, from a Welsh point of view the arrival of the big names meant that plenty of very good club players were looking to play a decent standard of semi-pro rugby in London. Three names immediately spring to mind: Andy Lee, Gregg Botterman and Steve Ravenscroft made a combined total of 283 appearances in the scarlet jersey, scoring 682 points and 24 tries.

New coach Brendan Venter has made good use of his South African connections – and the South African investment, with Nigel Wray having sold a significant stake to a consortium with links to the Blue Bulls and Stormers Super 14 franchises – to sign-up many of his countrymen this summer, including hooker Schalk Britz from the Stormers and fly-half Derick Hougaard from Leicester.  They’ve also picked-up a certain Fijian international called Michael Tagicakibau from London Welsh, who will be joining a squad led by current England captain Steve Borthwick.  There’s talk of moving across town to groundshare at Fulham’s Craven Cottage to be closer to the heart of the estimated 750,000 Boks resident in the capital – maybe a bit too close to Richmond (and Brentford…?) for our liking. In the meantime, two Premiership fixtures are being lined-up at Wembley Stadium with hopes of beating the world record attendance for a domestic club fixture.