MUNSTER LOSS SET SARRIES BACK BY FIVE YEARS
Former Ireland and Saracens winger Darragh O’Mahony recalls the chaos of playing for the Londoners before their remarkable rise to prominence
OUT on the field at the Ricoh Arena, Saracens were inflicting another European defeat on Munster. Sitting in the stands was Darragh O’Mahony – perhaps the only Munster native in attendance who had a soft spot for the Premiership giants.
O’Mahony – who grew up in Rochestown in Cork – spent five years on the books at Saracens from 1999 to 2004, scoring 24 tries in 142 appearances.
He still has ties to the London club. He shared flats with former Scotland lock Scott Murray and club stalwart Tony Diprose. He is good friends with former centre Kevin Sorrell, now Saracens’ long-serving backs coach. O’Mahony’s only involvement in the game these days is coaching the Harpenden Under 12s and one of his players is the son of Phil Morrow, the club’s head of strength and conditioning who once worked under Declan Kidney in the Ireland set-up.
LONDON CALLING
AN intelligent and skilful winger, O’Mahony left Cork for Dublin in the early 1990s. His standout performances for UCD, Lansdowne and Leinster earned him a spot in the Ireland squad for the 1995 World Cup in South Africa, replacing Richard Wallace for the quarterfinal loss to France.
With the game turning professional, O’Mahony’s talents quickly drew the attention of the big-spending English clubs. The Corkman carved out his reputation with a raft of tries for Moseley and Bedford before Saracens came calling.
He still resides in north London – not far from Saracens’ home ground, Allianz Park.
The club are undoubtedly one of the kingpins of the English and European game these days. Next weekend, they will be aiming to secure a third European Champions Cup in four years when they take on Leinster in the final at St James’ Park. And their dominance is showing no signs of waning. They have the investment, infrastructure and the academy system to stay on top of the pile for quite some time.
It wasn’t always that way, however.
BIG STARS, BASIC LODGINGS
WHEN O’Mahony signed for Saracens before the turn of the millennium, he arrived at a club besieged by problems, on an off the field. Still, it was exciting.
Nigel Wray, a local to the area, but more importantly an investment banker worth a reported £300 million (Domino’s Pizza is just one of his many projects) had bought the club and began bankrolling a new beginning.
Big stars such as Michael Lynagh, Thomas Castaignede and Francois Pienaar were recruited, but investment was needed in all aspects of the operation.
‘Nigel came in with a huge vision and huge amounts of money but basically he invested into a very small, poorly-facilitated club in every way,’ says O’Mahony.
‘People thought of Saracens and just assumed they had the best of everything, which they probably do these days, but they certainly didn’t in my day. We had it pretty basic, to be honest. We didn’t have a gym so we’d go and use a local gym somewhere. We’d use an athletics track down the road, which was council owned. Even our training ground was council owned.
‘None of it was privately owned by Saracens. They were pretty basic facilities. You had these superstars on the team so the team looked like the Galacticos in one way but actually the reality of our training environment was very basic.’
There were stints at Enfield followed by a groundshare with Watford FC at Vicarage Road. Now, Saracens play their rugby in the state-of-the-art, if slightly soulless, Allianz Park in the quaint surroundings of Hendon in north-west London.
‘BUCK’ AND THE BOYS
SARACENS have a director of rugby in Mark McCall, who has been at the club for almost a decade with a settled backroom team. They have a prolific academy which has produced the likes of Jamie George, Maro Itoje, George Kruis and Owen Farrell. They also have the financial muscle to go to the market and sign top-class talent like Schalk Burger and Liam Williams, with Elliot Daly due to arrive next season for good measure. Saracens are very much a settled and efficient operation, but O’Mahony remembers the early days when coaches came and went as quickly as trains in Kings Cross station.
‘That was hit and miss,’ he recalls. ‘We changed coaches every year at that stage. In truth, it’s a reflection of how different their model is today when you see Mark McCall who’s been there for years.
‘When I joined, Mark Evans and Paul Turner were there – they went within six months. They were replaced by a guy called Alan Zondagh, a South African guy. He lasted about 12 months and was replaced by Francois Pienaar. He did it for two years.
‘Then we had Wayne Shelford for another year. He lasted a year and then we had Rod Kafer, who was the last coach I had at the time. ‘So, we went through a huge amount of coaches. It’s very difficult to analyse anything when you’re going through so many changes on a yearly basis.’ Shelford’s one-season stint was particular memorable. Drafted in by Wray, the former All Black arrived at the club with a fearsome reputation from his playing days. The man known as ‘Buck’ laid down the law pretty quickly, bringing the star-studded squad to a pre-season military-style camp in Aldershot. There were early morning training sessions and no shortage of ‘hard yakka’, but his methods proved to be outdated.
‘He was very old school but I actually liked him,’ says O’Mahony.
‘Again, it was just went to show that there was no analysis done. Someone would have said, “God, Wayne Shelford was a great player 10 years ago, lets bring him over”. If anybody had looked into it... he was never going to be a professional coach. But his values, his core beliefs and what he tried to instil — I wouldn’t have a bad word to say about him. I loved playing under him. He was a bloke who genuinely had your back and there’s not many coaches I would say that about.
‘But he was never going to be a successful professional coach. The reality was his career and his background was from a bygone age when you look at it in terms of professionalism.’
THE MUNSTER SLIDE
UNSURPRISINGLY, all that turbulence had an adverse affect on results. O’Mahony was actually one of the few constants during those formative years at Saracens.
‘When I joined Saracens, we were one of the two best sides in England and then in the matter of 12 months other sides, the more traditional sides had copped on, sped up and actually recruited better,’ he explains.
‘We slid down the pile very quickly. There was one year when we were fighting relegation.’
O’Mahony played in the famous European Cup loss in Thomond Park in 2000, when a late Keith Wood try and Ronan O’Gara touchline conversion sealed Saracens’ fate and served as a launchpad for the modern Munster legend.
‘From that day on, Saracens went backwards for about five years and people who played for Munster that day said their whole European journey took on a new life at that point,’ notes O’Mahony.
‘What was it, a last-minute try and they kicked the conversion to win the match? I keep thinking, if things had gone the other way, what way would it have gone for us or them?
‘We ended up being, at best, a mediocre side and, at that stage, a club that every other side really wanted to beat because we had this “money is no object” image – which
‘IT WAS SO HIT AND MISS THEN, WE CHANGED COACHES EVERY YEAR’
wasn’t entirely true. We were probably the team for a while that everyone in England loved to hate.’
HEARTS AND MINDS
MANY would argue Saracens still have that reputation. The lack of a broad fanbase or a local identity has long been used as a stick to beat them with, but O’Mahony has a counter argument.
‘I don’t knock for them for that because they are where they’re from and you just have to accept that.
‘People who don’t know anything about it would say they’re a big club … actually they’ve come from very small and very humble beginnings.
‘They’re not from a rugby heartland. They don’t have a natural community and they don’t have a natural base but what’s very interesting is, look at what they’ve done now.
‘I’ve got an 11-year-old kid, my eldest boy, and Saracens are his team. So, if they keep getting it right on the pitch and they keep sustaining this thing; all of his mates are into rugby and they all support Saracens. ‘We live 15-20 miles from Saracens now but they’re beginning to capture the hearts and minds. ‘So, they are on the road to doing something but I would never try to compare Saracens to a Leinster or a Munster that way because that’s not what they’ll ever be. ‘They don’t have that natural base. They don’t have that natural community and they never will.’
MAGIC MARK
WHAT Saracens do have is McCall, the former Ulster and Ireland centre who has guided the Londoners to an era of unprecedented success. O’Mahony won two of four Ireland caps playing alongside McCall and they live near each other. They often bump into each other in a local coffee shop, but they rarely talk rugby.
‘The other thing is I see the hours he does,’ says O’Mahony.
‘I think I get up pretty early. I’m into London on a seven o’clock train and most mornings I actually drive by his house and his car is already gone at that stage. There’s an awful lot of hard work that goes into making sure that a team is right.
‘I think the longest-serving coach at Saracens in professional terms must be sub-three years and Mark must be there going on 10 years so it’s a phenomenal stint that he’s done and I suspect that job is for him as long as he wants to keep going.’
Saracens – for all their detractors and their chequered history – have certainly come a long way.
Next Saturday in Newcastle, they will look to set the record straight against Leinster.
’It genuinely feels like the two best sides in Europe have made the final,’ says O’Mahony.
‘It’s going to be pretty close to call. It might not be the most open and entertaining game of rugby but in terms of a contest, it looks pretty damn even.’