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Vincent Koch opens up on Wasps redundancy and his switch to France

(Photo by Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile via Getty Images)

After the financial meltdown of Wasps, most of the players at the club have managed to rebound and find new homes, some even shining in the Top 14 a few days later. Life might be different than in Coventry as they settle into their new surroundings, but players like Springboks tighthead Vincent Koch and Burger Odendaal, his fellow South African, are finding their feet again after a difficult time.

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Koch ran out for South Africa against Italy in Genoa on November 19. The next day he was on a plane back to his homeland to finalise his visa for France having bagged a contract with Stade Francais. No time was lost as the prop touched down in Paris to make his Top 14 debut three days later in a narrow defeat by Toulon.

It was a true baptism of fire for the South African after just a handful of training sessions and being unable to converse in the language of Moliere. “I could just say ‘hello’ pretty much,” Koch admitted to AFP.

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“Everything came so quick,” he added about the way Wasps were put into administration in mid-October. “When you start playing professional rugby, you never think that is something that could ever happen to you.”

After six seasons at Saracens, the 32-year-old front-row was laid off by Wasps without having even played a single game in the colours of his new club. “It put a lot of pressure on myself, on my family,” continued Koch. “I had two weeks to try to sort things out before I joined up with the Springboks.

“In that two weeks, I had to look for a new contract, try to figure out what the future held for me and then as well move everything from my house because I couldn’t stay there. I had to get someone to move my house, stop all my debit orders, TV, the wifi. Trying to get out of my housing lease as well.”

Jack Willis had spent his entire professional career at Wasps until the call came on October 17 for a meeting at the training ground. “We were just expecting to be told that we were going into administration,” said Willis. “We weren’t expecting to be told that we were all losing our jobs.

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“When we were told we were made redundant, the room just went into complete silence and everyone was shocked. There were quite a few tears from everyone afterwards, it was a very emotional day.”

The England flanker has also landed in the French elite, at Toulouse, not so far from his younger brother Tom, who is turning out in the back row for Top 14 rivals Bordeaux until the end of the season when he heads home to Saracens in a bid to play for England.

Among ten Wasps players to have crossed the Channel, with others having joined Super Rugby and United Rugby Championship clubs, are scrum-half Dan Robson (Pau), prop Biyi Alo (Racing 92) and flanker Brad Shields (Perpignan).

“There are a lot of us who have found stuff now, which is brilliant, but there are also a lot of guys who haven’t found jobs,” Willis continued. “It’s been a bit of a roller-coaster couple of months.” Turning to Toulouse, he added: “It does feel a bit crazy, but it is also really exciting.

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“If I had stayed locally to another (English) team that was close it would have felt really weird day to day. Whereas this is such a big change that it just feels like an exciting adventure.”

Springboks prop Koch also opted to highlight the positive over the negative from a situation out of the players’ control, calling it an “unbelievable journey” for him, his partner and their young child. “It’s definitely better than Coventry so we will definitely make good memories here,” Koch said of his new life in the French capital.

“Some day in life, you get to sit down and reflect on what happened. We can actually tick a box and say, listen, we had an unbelievable time in Paris, in one of the most beautiful countries in the world. I always make a joke saying there is worst places to be in the world than Paris.”

Koch, who was part of the Springboks squad that won the 2019 Rugby World Cup, touched down in the French capital with a former Wasps teammate in Paolo Odogwu. “We knew they were coming out of a tricky period, but they were happy to bounce back with us. They have really integrated very well,” said Stade coach Gonzalo Quesada.

Odogwu also has an English compatriot in the Stade squad in the shape of the outside back, Harry Glover. “They are both single and living in a flat in (the chic central Parisian area of) Saint-Germain. So we will be keeping an eye on them!”

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G
GrahamVF 23 minutes ago
Does South Africa have a future in European competition?

"has SA actually EVER helped to develop another union to maturity like NZ has with Japan," yes - Argentina. You obviously don't know the history of Argentinian rugby. SA were touring there on long development tours in the 1950's

We continued the Junior Bok tours to the Argentine through to the early 70's

My coach at Grey High was Giepie Wentzel who toured Argentine as a fly half. He told me about how every Argentinian rugby club has pictures of Van Heerden and Danie Craven on prominent display. Yes we have developed a nation far more than NZ has done for Japan. And BTW Sa players were playing and coaching in Japan long before the Kiwis arrived. Fourie du Preez and many others were playing there 15 years ago.


"Isaac Van Heerden's reputation as an innovative coach had spread to Argentina, and he was invited to Buenos Aires to help the Pumas prepare for their first visit to South Africa in 1965.[1][2] Despite Argentina faring badly in this tour,[2] it was the start of a long and happy relationship between Van Heerden and the Pumas. Izak van Heerden took leave from his teaching post in Durban, relocated to Argentina, learnt fluent Spanish, and would revolutionise Argentine play in the late 1960s, laying the way open for great players such as Hugo Porta.[1][2] Van Heerden virtually invented the "tight loose" form of play, an area in which the Argentines would come to excel, and which would become a hallmark of their playing style. The Pumas repaid the initial debt, by beating the Junior Springboks at Ellis Park, and emerged as one of the better modern rugby nations, thanks largely to the talents of this Durban schoolmaster.[1]"


After the promise made by Junior Springbok manager JF Louw at the end of a 12-game tour to Argentina in 1959 – ‘I will do everything to ensure we invite you to tour our country’ – there were concerns about the strength of Argentinian rugby. South African Rugby Board president Danie Craven sent coach Izak van Heerden to help the Pumas prepare and they repaid the favour by beating the Junior Springboks at Ellis Park.

149 Go to comments
J
JW 6 hours ago
Does South Africa have a future in European competition?

I rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.


He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.


The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).


The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.


The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).


It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.

149 Go to comments
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