The 'dark conversations' that jolted Koch into action at Saracens

Springboks World Cup winner Vincent Koch is looking to sign off on his six-year stint at Saracens with another Gallagher Premiership title on Saturday, but the tighthead wasn’t always as coveted at the London club as he is now. The 32-year-old will definitely be fondly farewelled after he plays his last match before his move to Wasps for the 2022/23 season. 

However, he took time out in the build-up to this weekend’s Twickenham showpiece to explain how the club’s tough love during his maiden season with them was awkward but it eventually became the making of their prosperous relationship together. 

Having arrived from the Super Rugby Stormers, the international front-rower made a November 2016 Anglo-Welsh Cup debut for the club before heading away again to start a couple of more Test matches, including against England at Twickenham. 

Will Skelton on Champions Cup celebrations and playing for the Barbarians | RugbyPass Offload | Episode 38

Will Skelton on Champions Cup celebrations and playing for the Barbarians | RugbyPass Offload | Episode 38

The big rig Will Skelton joins us from Monaco this week where he’s on tour with the Barbarians and rooming with George Kruis. He fills us in on the tour so far, hanging out at the palace with the Prince and who’s leading the charge off the pitch. We also hear about his man-of-the-match performance for La Rochelle in the Champions Cup Final, that famous open-top bus celebration and what it’s like playing for coaches like O’Gara and Cheika.

He soon returned to make his Premiership and Heineken Champions Cup debuts only to find himself axed at the turn of the year, going without any Saracens match in early 2017 in between a January 15 European run against Scarlets and a March 11 Anglo-Welsh game against Leicester. 

It was a jolting dent to his ego, given that he thought he was the whole package being a Springboks player, but he eventually got his head down. Rather than sulk too long, he absorbed the criticism voiced by Mark McCall to finish his first season in England as a Heineken Champions Cup winner, starting the final versus Clermont and establishing himself as a Premiership playoff starter as well.  

“After the autumn international period where I was with the Springboks, I came back to Saracens and didn’t play for eight weeks and Mark’s words were, ‘We think you’re a good player but we think you don’t work hard enough’. For me that was a massive eye-opener,” revealed Koch ahead of a Premiership final when he will be packing down for Saracens against Leicester skipper Ellis Genge.  

“Coming from an international set-up I thought I was the full package but they were ‘you don’t work hard enough’ and that was the best eye-opener for me. I had a nice chat with them and they said, ‘We want to make me a better player, we think you can get better’. All the coaches spent so much time with me.

“The things I didn’t do, which you don’t see too much with a prop, were kick chases, for example. They worked hard with me on that, how hard can you work off the ball. For a tighthead prop, it’s something you don’t expect to do but if you can do it, it stands out and they have made me a better player. 

“They have kept me on my toes. I would have dark conversations with them if a game didn’t go well, they would tell me what they expected from me and the work-ons I had to do. Throughout the six years they never stopped coaching and they had open conversations. I wanted to get better every time, I’m not the perfect picture, I’m not the full package. They invested loads in me trying to make me better.”

Koch now compares the level of training done at Saracens to what he has experienced in recent times with the world champion Springboks. “We had some of the Springboks coaches here a few weeks ago and they were quite surprised by the way we trained and the level we train at,” he explained.

“It is definitely not that they train harder here, it’s just they expected something else, they wanted me to do something else that maybe I didn’t think I had to do and maybe back in the day it wasn’t a great journey for us with the Springboks in 2016, maybe I just went into a comfort zone and thought it was good enough and the club actually told me it is not good enough, we want our boys to peak, to train and to play at this level. 

“Saracens training is exactly like the Springboks set-up at the moment. The Springboks coaches were very impressed by the way we train. Maybe back in the day it was a bit different and it was probably one of the reasons, I’m not sure. 

“Saracens wanted the full package for us to work harder and for me, that was the toughest thing to hear – that I had to work harder and had to learn the tough way not playing for eight weeks and seeing the boys playing. They just opened my eyes and now I know exactly what the club wants and they expect from me as a player.”