'I'd very little reservations about staying, I knew we'd be back'

Maro Itoje has explained he never doubted that Saracens would be back in the big time, that days such as this Saturday’s Gallagher Premiership final appearance were still possible despite the club’s automatic relegation to the Championship. It was January 2020 when the decision was taken to send the London club packing to the second tier of English rugby, but that demotion didn’t shake the talisman’s belief that Sarries remained the best place for his career to keep developing.

Second row Itoje was 25 years old when Saracens learned their drastic faith for some problematic accounting. However, rather than jump ship, he stuck by the club that gave him his apprenticeship in the game and that faith has been rewarded two-and-a-half years later by the opportunity to win big again at Twickenham this weekend.

Itoje would have been coveted by numerous rival clubs in England and abroad but when mapping out his career development, the England and Lions lock felt it best that he stuck by Mark McCall’s Saracens and time has proven him very much right.

The Breakdown | Sky Sport NZ | Episode 17

The Breakdown | Sky Sport NZ | Episode 17

Looking back on the remarkable drama that unfolded, an expulsion that resulted in the Championship season Saracens originally thought they would enter being greatly truncated by the pandemic, Itoje said: “It was an interesting time, a period where there was a lot of uncertainty, a period where we didn’t really know what was happening.

“That coincided with the covid stuff, it was double trouble, a tumultuous period for everyone at Saracens. Personally, I had very little reservations in my mind about staying, I knew this was the place I wanted to be.

“I knew Saracens would be back to competing for things – you only need to look at the quality of the personnel. When I say personnel I am not only talking about playing staff, I am talking about coaches, about head office, about support staff. I knew we would be back at some point in these types of arenas [the Premiership final].

“I still felt Saracens was the best place for me to continue to grow as a rugby player and as a person and I still felt Saracens was an environment where I could achieve all of my goals. I still felt that Saracens was the place and despite relegation – no one really wants to play in the Championship – I still felt Saracens was the right place for me to have the type of career I wanted to have.”

What greatly helped convince Itoje to stick with Saracens was how the coaches constantly strive to better themselves and how the players’ mentality is to chase success year after year without exception. “It’s two-fold,” he said when asked at a media briefing ahead of this weekend’s final why things don’t go stale at the club.

“First of all the coaches are very invested in self-development, they often have people come in from different environments, we often have guest speakers come in (Alastair Campbell, Eddie Howe and Sean Dyche were recent visitors) and they often go away on reccies. They go to New Zealand, Australia, different sports teams and environments trying to pick the brains of different experts. They are by no means dormant, they are by no means resting on their laurels.

“The second aspect is the mentality of the players at this club in particular the senior players, we want to have successful careers. We don’t want to have a successful year, we don’t want to have a successful couple of years, we want a successful career and in order to have that you need to be consistent.

“You need to have the hunger to go and go again year after year and if you look at the top athletes from different parts of the world and whatever sport they play, they are constantly at it and they go after it year after year. That is the mentality of a lot of our players. We want to go after it year after year, put our best foot forward and see what happens.

“We are extremely excited to be here (in the final). It’s a great opportunity. If anything, the last two, three years have shown me that you can’t take any moments like this for granted. It is truly a blessing, truly an honour.

“Most Premiership players don’t reach one final, we have been in it a few times and the last couple of years have shown us how precious and how special these moments in your life and in your career are. We don’t want to take anything for granted. We just want to go out there and put our best foot forward.”