Inside Saracens’ rebuild as life after Owen Farrell begins

There was a brief moment in his illustrious career when Jonathan Davies, the former Wales and Lions centre, appeared to be more widely known as the player who was not Brian O’Driscoll.

The decision by Warren Gatland to drop O’Driscoll for the third Test against Australia on the 2013 tour thrust the then 25-year-old Davies, who at that point had a relatively low profile on the international stage, into the eye of a selection storm that overshadowed the build-up to the series decider.

Davies justified Gatland’s selection as the Lions romped to a 41-16 victory in Sydney, and the episode sprung to mind when pondering the challenge faced by Fergus Burke, the former Crusaders fly-half, before his Saracens debut against Gloucester on Saturday. For the 24-year-old, who qualifies for both England and Scotland, faces the challenge of being the Saracens fly-half who is not Owen Farrell.

It is a challenge arguably even more daunting than the one that faced Davies, given that Farrell had been the absolute heartbeat of the club for well over a decade before his move to Racing 92 this season.

That Burke will be seen as the standard-bearer for what represents the start of a new era at the club, following the departure of the Vunipola brothers, Mako and Billy, and retirements of Sean Maitland and Alex Lewington, only adds to the intrigue.

Mark McCall, the director of rugby, said the club had been planning for a rebuilding phase this season for a couple of years, but admitted that the only positional change that had not been foreseen was Farrell’s shock departure last season, following his decision after the World Cup in France to step back from international rugby.

‘People shouldn’t compare Fergus with Owen’

Significantly, the decision was taken not to sign a like-for-like replacement who was already an established international, but instead recruit a player who reflected the transitional state of the squad. McCall, in his 16th season, is charting another new era based on an influx of academy players that is generating excitement not witnessed since the class of 2008 which featured Farrell, Jamie George, George Kruis, Jackson Wray, and Will Fraser. Saracens had five players in the England Under-20s squad that won the World Cup in July and eight players in the England Under-18s.

“When Owen decided to leave, and that did come out of the blue, we made a decision fairly quickly that we didn’t want to go and get a short-term fix,” McCall said. “We wanted someone who could come here in that pivotal position and grow with the team, because this team’s got a lot of growth in it in terms of four or five years together, if that’s possible.

“When a younger player has been brought in, either from the academy or from the outside to take over from the senior players – you think of Jamie George and Schalk Brits, Ben Earl and Jacques Burger, Nick Tompkins and Brad Barritt, or Maro Itoje and Steve Borthwick – they’re not mirror images of the great player they are replacing. That is really important that they are their own player and they have got their own time to grow.

“They have grown into great players for the club in their own way and we very much hope and think that is what’s going to happen with Fergus. But Fergus has got to be allowed to breathe. People shouldn’t try to compare him directly with Owen, because he’s a very different kind of player. But he’s got everything that he needs to become a great player at the club over the years. That’s very much the way we look at it.”

‘Fergus was never rushed and very measured’

In the search for Farrell’s replacement, Saracens carried out comprehensive due diligence, including speaking to All Blacks head coach Scott Robertson, his former mentor at the Crusaders. But it was in two long conversations with the player, who had never been to the UK before his appearance for the Barbarians against Fiji at Twickenham in June, that McCall was convinced that they had found their man.

“When we talked to him, there was just something very assured about him,” McCall said.

“We’d seen that in his game, that he was never rushed, and he’s very measured. Clearly, he had a fantastic skill set, but, talking to him, we just felt that he was a good fit. He worked really hard to get here as early as he could and join us for the pre-season, because, at one point, he was maybe going to have to stay in Canterbury until October or November, which wouldn’t have been ideal for anybody.

“It was a leap of faith by him, because he was going to be given the keys to the Crusaders. And I think he was intrigued and brave enough as well to leave where he was and to come somewhere unknown. I was impressed by his courage and bravery.”

‘We need to tell Saracens’ story more aggressively’

Underlining the sense of a new era at the club was the appointment of Mark Thompson, who became chief executive in February, having impressed as chief operations officer at Burnley FC. Thompson is driving change, attempting to increase the profile of the men’s and women’s sides.

“When you go inside our building, there’s an openness and an authenticity about Saracens and the way we speak and the way we act,” Thompson said. “I want us to translate to a broader audience, whether it’s rugby fans or business press or the population as a whole, or people that we’re trying to engage with our club, some positive conversations that happen within our club.

“We have a bunch of senior leaders. Jamie [George] is England captain and has been as open as anyone in terms of talking about the environment they want to create, the relationship they want to have with their fans. Maro [Itoje] is an incredibly articulate person around this. We have other senior leaders of the team, like Ben [Earl], who have a very strong view about playing an active role in engaging and getting the word about rugby out there and winning fans over. So, I think that’s the starting point at which we come from. So, I think we need to tell that story more aggressively.”

The qualities that made Itoje captain

The appointment of Itoje as the club’s captain embodies the sense of renewal. “I guess when we talk about Maro’s profile, a lot of people will look about the profile that he has amongst rugby in the population, more broadly, but when we’re choosing a captain, the most important thing is the profile he has within our building,” added Thompson.

“When you speak to Mark, the three things that come out when he speaks about Maro are firstly what a fantastic trainer and leader he is on the training pitch, which is obviously so important, especially when you’re nurturing a relatively young group, as we are now.

“Secondly, he speaks a lot about how he is considered with everything he says. He very rarely comes to you with something that hasn’t really been thought through, which means the quality of conversations are high, and I’ve seen that in my limited, growing interactions with him when we speak about rugby.

“Thirdly, Mark says that no one leaves a conversation or an interaction with Maro feeling anything less than better about themselves. And so that consistency is going to be great for a squad and a young squad, even down to the fact that our head coach, Joe Shaw, and he go back a long way. Joe was coach of the A team when Maro was coming through as captain.

“We’ve got relationships, strong relationships that have thrived for a long time, that now just can be accelerated onto a bigger scale. Maro is an incredible ambassador for rugby and for our club within the population and within London. But fundamentally, we’re choosing someone because we believe they are the best person to lead us to a successful on-field performance in the coming years.

“We are also then trying to ensure that our crop of young players coming through are ready to fit in seamlessly. We have a higher proportion of England Under-18s and Under-20s than we’ve ever had. We’re extraordinarily excited about some of those players, so we believe the pipeline is there, and that’s why we have a coaching staff that are so excited about the new era because it will be led still by senior players like Jamie, Maro, Ben and Elliot Daly but there is going to hopefully be an avalanche of players coming through.”