Results felt by everyone on and off the pitch

ON RUGBY:From marketing to coaching to community, every strand of life at London Irish is affected, writes BOB CASEY

ATTENDING a recent quarterly meeting that brings together the London Irish family, from chief executive Andy Martin down through representatives from administration, marketing, community, coaching and playing, got me thinking about not alone how interdependent every sphere of the club is, but also how reliant those strands are on the team doing well on the pitch.

How we perform affects everyone, both in obvious ways, in terms of daily regimen and long-term projects, but also in how it directly influences the ambition of an individual.

Andy Martin has been hugely successful in his 27 years with Barclays Bank, and since he took over at London Irish he would harbour great ambitions, primarily for the club but also, to some extent, on a personal level. That attitude would be mirrored by the majority of staff.

He can’t, though, achieve those targets unless the team is successful on the pitch. It’s not an issue that I would have thought about often in the past – if at all, to be honest – but attending these meetings has been an education in discovering what approximates to the domino effect.

London Irish boasts an excellent working environment and the fact the administration offices are on site where we train helps to bolster the camaraderie: we include that side of the club in many of the social things we do as a squad.

When you’re competing on a pitch you don’t think about how a run of success will give our corporate and marketing arms a fillip as they chase the new business or keep existing clients happy.

The figures, though, don’t lie. We attracted a bumper crowd of 21,500 to the Madejski Stadium for what we had billed as our St Patrick’s Day clash with the Sale Sharks.

We average about 11,500 supporters at our home games, a figure that puts us in third place in the English Premiership standings.

Playing at Reading, the provision of food and drink, ticketing, policing, stewarding and sundry other outgoings means the club needs to attract support, advertising and sponsorship of sufficient volume to offset those costs.

London Irish is not like Northampton or Gloucester, where rugby is the predominant sport. Irish is just one of several rugby franchises in London. The club took some stick from season-ticket holders for the decision to switch the final Heineken Cup pool match against Leinster from the Madejski Stadium to Twickenham.

The target was a crowd of 40,000, and 39,500 attended, a tremendous achievement considering that there was an eight-working-day lifespan for the project.

A competition like the LV=Cup also has financial implications for the club. While it’s not possible to prioritise three competitions – Heineken Cup and Guinness Premiership are the other two – winning matches in the LV=Cup is worth €30,000 per victory.

We were one kick away from earning a €340,000 pay day by making the European quarter-finals and a trip to Thomond Park. Securing a home semi-final in the Premiership allows the club to keep the entire gate, which is another potential big pay day.

When players take the pitch they don’t think of these things; they’re obviously aware of them in a peripheral sort of way, but I haven’t yet managed to get them into a pre-match talk. The boys have enough to think about!

We do, though, understand our responsibilities when going to the corporate boxes after matches. Losing is never easy to take, but you have to be able to put that aside when you walk through the door and instead focus on trying to ensure that people enjoy their day out. It’s easy to offer a sunny disposition when you’ve won.

By going to the boxes we are just fulfilling a small role in potentially assisting our club people in securing corporate renewals for next season. That is where you see an example of the London Irish team that extends beyond those who simply play for the club.

London Irish recently confirmed the signing of Danny Bowden for next season, but you’ll notice there hasn’t been the usual number of announcements across the clubs and that is because of next year’s World Cup. Those players who feel they have a realistic chance of making the New Zealand, Australia or South Africa squads will be reluctant to move abroad. The World Cup represents the pinnacle of any player’s career and that attitude is reflected in the lack of movement.

On a more serious note, having given up chocolate for Lent, I was planning to eat my bodyweight in the stuff yesterday, but obviously had to wait until after our Premiership clash with London Wasps. By mid-afternoon I needed the sugar loading to try to improve my mood. It was a massively disappointing game.

We had a chance to put Wasps out of the title race and instead we coughed up a four-try bonus point to them as well as losing the match.

That’s probably as badly as we have defended for a long time. Normally we support each other, but instead on too many occasions left each other hanging out to dry. I missed a couple of tackles, which really smarted.

We lacked accuracy in both defence and attack.

I have spoken before about the need to play the referee, but we didn’t adapt. There was no point contesting the ball at the breakdown because he didn’t allow it, and we would have been better served just fanning out and treating it like rugby league.

We have a game in hand and arguably a better run-in than Wasps, so there is no time to feel sorry for ourselves. We’ll have to make do with the same squad for this weekend’s game against Worcester, and maybe have a couple of the 12 senior players who are out injured back for the following week.

I don’t doubt the character of this squad and I’m sure we’ll pick it up again at the weekend: we have to, because nothing else will suffice.

Exiles slip down table

Wasps 33 London Irish 22

WASPS CLIMBED above London Irish to fourth place in the English Premiership with a bonus-point victory at Adams Park.

Irish recovered from a shocking start that saw them 13-0 down to contribute to a rousing and hugely physical spectacle.

Tom Varndell, Dan Ward-Smith and Dominic Waldouck crossed for Wasps tries, and they got an early penalty try.

Seilala Mapusua, Steffon Armitage and James Tideswell responded for Irish but they could not claim a losing bonus point.