Exile reaping reward of London Irish's evolution

BOB CASEY INTERVIEW: GERRY THORNLEYtalks to the London Irish captain as his side prepares for tomorrow's Premiership final against Leicester at Twickenham

HE’S BEEN an expatriate in London Irish for seven years now, and he’s played over 180 games for them, yet tomorrow at Twickenham will be the biggest of them all. With some pride, Bob Casey will lead his adopted club into their first Guinness Premiership decider against the serial finalists from Leicester.

It will be good to catch up with his counterpart, Geordan Murphy, at today’s final press call, two Kildare men – Casey from Maynooth, Murphy from Naas – leading their clubs in English club rugby’s premier day out. In the season that’s in it, that almost seems fitting, though Casey expresses the hope that north Kildare will win out.

“We’ve had some big days in my time here; we’ve been to a European Challenge Cup final, Guinness Premiership and Heineken Cup semi-finals, but this has to be the biggest, because it’s been earned over the course of a whole season. It certainly makes a change from my first few years here, when we were usually in relegation scraps,” he admits.

The change in culture at the club started three years ago, says Casey, and he attributes it to the ambition shown by the club’s board. “They brought in Brian Smith and Toby Booth, and signed players like Mike Catt, and it’s all about the quality of players they’ve signed in the last three years.

“Before then it seemed we couldn’t score a try for love nor money. We were almost totally reliant on Barry Everitt’s boot, but this season we’re the top try scorers in the Premiership and I think we’ve the second best defence. But the whole environment has changed,” he adds, citing the acquisition of Terenure man Alan Ryan as strength and conditioning coach. “He’s made a massive difference. He used to work with Craig White at Wasps and they used to beat teams up but now everybody else has caught up with them.”

Casey points out Irish have the best second-half record in the Premiership. “Unlike previous years too, even when we’ve lost we’ve managed to get the bonus point, which I think shows how fit we are as well as the spirit we have.”

From the vantage point of the old sod, some of this progress appears to have seen Irish’s Irishness – as it were – diluted. As much a figurehead for the club as captain, the former Blackrock College man doesn’t quite see it like that.

“Obviously it’s disappointing we can’t get more Irish players, though it isn’t as if we haven’t tried,” he admits. “With the new tax incentive acquiring Irish players has become more difficult, but we’re still very much an Irish club at heart. Aside from myself and Eoghan Hickey, Declan Danaher’s family are Irish, and so are the likes of Shane Geraghty’s, Kieran Roche’s and Nick Kennedy’s, and a lot of the staff are Irish. A good majority of the fans are also Irish,” he adds.

While tenants of Reading FC at the Madejski Stadium, the club have retained their base at Sunbury, which on Sundays is a magnet for the Irish community. “We would love to play our games there but we couldn’t get planning permission, though we have great facilities there for training. Three or four weeks ago there must have been 2,000 kids at the annual mini rugby blitz and Blackrock brought over a load of teams.”

Casey is set to see out his career there. “I’ve another three years left on my contract,” says the 30-year-old. “I’ve often thought about coming home but I felt I’d put too much into London Irish to leave and I also owe the club a lot.”

Casey was the club’s players’ player of the year in 2004-05, and the supporters’ player of the year the following season, yet he won the last of his five caps as a replacement against Canada on the Americas tour of June 2000. He admits that after a few years in the wilderness he’d given up hope of ever adding to his haul, but since Declan Kidney assumed the reins his hopes are rekindled.

He led the Ireland A team in last year’s Churchill Cup and was involved in training sessions during the November internationals and Six Nations. With the absence of Ireland’s Lions contingent and Leinster’s participation in the Heineken Cup final, he has every chance of bridging that nine-year gap when leaving with the Ireland squad for their tour of Canada and the USA next Monday. “We meet up on Sunday and to be honest it would mean an awful lot to play for Ireland again.”

First though, there’s tomorrow’s grand finale to the English season, and Casey accepts it could hardly be more daunting. “They’ve been in five of the last six finals, I think. They’re the form team, they’ve won 10 of their last 11 matches and they’ve a squad of 50, whereas we’ve got 32, which just shows you the difference in budgets. But we’ve trained well,” he adds, revelling in the underdog tag, “It’s only up the road in Twickenham for us, we’re going to enjoy the occasion and we know if the 22 of us hit form on the day we can give them a real run for it.”

THE first meeting of an all-Ireland police rugby team, a combination of An Garda Síochána and the PSNI, and their British counterparts takes place at Donnybrook today, kick-off 2pm. President Mary McAleese will host a post-match reception at Áras an Uachtaráin for both teams.