London Irish‘s record try scorer Topsy Ojo says it’s regrettable that the club weren’t given more time to try and find someone to fund the club before their suspension from the Premiership in the first week of June.
Ojo, 37, played 301 times for the Exiles between 2005 and 2019, crossing the whitewash 80 times in a career laden with highlights that included scoring in their 2008 Heineken Cup semi-final defeat to Toulouse, reaching the European Challenge Cup and Premiership finals of 2006 and 2009 with the club respectively and winning the 2016/17 and 2018/19 Championship titles.
Since retiring in 2019 he has worked closely in the club as an ambassador for London Irish, but was in a similar situation to many of the staff in the club in feeling that he was not given the full story of just how much trouble the club was in as they tried to get an investment deal over the line.
He said: “It did have a lot of similarities to Worcester and Wasps in terms of the final days. There were a lot of false promises and very little if any communication to the players and staff despite statements claiming otherwise.
“Everybody was in the same boat, I was being asked if I knew anything and I knew absolutely nothing. We were just waiting for news and a lot of the time stories would appear in the press before staff knew about them, which really goes to show you how things declined.
“It was a long saga that started in October last year and has reached a sorry conclusion. I don’t know these deals operate, but my gut absolutely tells me it could have been done.”
Speaking on The Rugby Paper Podcast, one of the key factors raised was the deadline set by the RFU at the end of May to get a deal done before suspension of the Premiership was confirmed.
Ojo feels that as long as the club had paid their staff they should have been given more time to get a deal over the line, whether with the American consortium that had been set to buy it or a different investor.
“I don’t know why that deadline was put in,” he continued. “If you’re trying to do everything you can to help a club out Irish could easily have been given until the end of this month. The fixtures aren’t actually due to be organised until mid July so I think they should have said: ‘If you can get the staff paid in full, you’ve got till the end of June.’
“That would’ve been another three and a half weeks. I don’t know how the deals work but if you set the American consortium a three-day limit, and went to try and sell it elsewhere if they didn’t get the deal over the line, then at least you’re doing everything you can.
“That initial window came about out of nowhere, I don’t really know the reasoning for it and I’ve not heard any reasoning to justify why that deadline was set. I understand wanting to know the plan but there was enough time to keep trying.
“If you need to, you can do things very very quickly and I think Irish definitely could have been given till the end of June to make this happen.”
It is this that has partly made it all the more difficult for players, staff and fans to take the news, in Ojo’s opinion.
With the club having had a superb season where they narrowly missed out on the top four and reached another Premiership Cup final, he is also confident that so long as the players and staff had received their salaries for May, they would have worked through June if there had been a chance to keep the club alive.
“In the middle part of last week when we were trying to wrap our heads around this, that was one of the things that was talked about a lot. More time could have been given, absolutely.
“Whether something would have come out of it, you don’t know. But if they’d paid the players and staff and bought ourselves three and a half weeks would most of them have gone for that? I’d say yes, because of what they’ve invested into the club, particularly in the last twelve months.
“In terms of the finish they had: on the verge of the play-offs, Premiership Cup final again and back in the Champions Cup at a higher seeding, it’s been the best season they’ve had in a long time.
“So there was a huge drive to kick on and see what they could do in the coming years so in the spirit of ‘Let’s do everything we can,’ why wouldn’t you?”
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