Robert Kitson on how former Leinster outhalf Barry Everitt has becomea key figure in the London Irish success story this season
If London Irish resemble any cup finalists of recent times, it is surely Wimbledon's Crazy Gang. This is the club, remember, who do not play their home games in London, have hardly any Irish players, are coached by a South African doctor nicknamed "Mugabe" and who generate more unforced laughter in a two-hour training session than most sides manage in a season.
Rather than prepare for a major occasion with po-faced predictability - extra training, overnight hotel, expensive button-holes - Irish prefer a raucous game called "Red Ass", which involves players catching and throwing two balls simultaneously and being forced to bare their backsides should they make excessive errors.
"If there's any South Africans involved the old dictatorship stuff comes out," confides Chris Sheasby, the former England number eight, his gleaming socialite's smile at full wattage. Clearly this is no ordinary bunch of cosmopolitan bums.
Very little about London Irish is quite what it seems. The club have risen to second in the Zurich Premiership, are in today's English Cup final and the semi-finals of the Parker Pen Shield through brain as much as fashionable brawn, and actively encourage players to question the coaching staff.
"The more we debate the more we learn," says Brendan Venter, the player-coach who, despite his nickname, believes rugby players perform best in a democratic environment. As today will prove, the club possess more supporters than average league crowds of 7,400 in Reading would indicate. A staggering 21,000 replica shirts have been sold this season - twice as many as Leicester.
Were they to win a trophy, it could just be the spark which lights the green touchpaper and transforms everybody's second-favourite side into the consistent force they yearn to become.
If Venter the centre - who opts not to captain the side because he acknowledges his lock, Ryan Strudwick, is a more calming on-field influence - has set the vibrant tone, so too has the outhalf Barry Everitt, who has scored 750 points in English rugby over the past two seasons.
We all know about modern goal-kickers; earnest Jonny Wilkinson clones, with smooth-kicking actions honed 24 hours a day by specialist coaches. Not Everitt. Until three years ago he had barely kicked a goal in his life and his art is entirely self-taught. Before joining Irish from Leinster two years ago, he was on the brink of abandoning senior rugby and becoming a stockbroker.
Perversity should be Everitt's middle name. His home village in Tipperary is deep in hurling country; as a kid he was almost the only one not running around with a stick. "When he came over from Ireland he had a reputation of being a great running outhalf who couldn't kick," recalled the Exiles' director of rugby Conor O'Shea. "Over here he's seen as a great kicker who can't run."
No wonder Northampton will take a keen interest in him today. Gary Gold, Venter's assistant and a fellow South African, argues that, give or take Wilkinson, he would not swap Everitt for any other outhalf in the country.
"He reads the game well and does an unbelievable kicking job," he said. "But his most under-estimated skill is his distribution. If Barry had out-and-out pace he would be world-class, Lions material. I think he deserves a chance to play for Ireland."
Everitt's defence, once quoted as a weakness, has now improved to the point where Venter uses him as a text-book example but, despite 423 points in 27 games this season, he has got no further than the Irish bench and an A team cap.
However, if Northampton believe targeting Everitt is the key to stopping their opponents they will fail. London Irish are a team of practised illusionists who have not got where they are today by luck or blarney. Everitt and several of his colleagues have never played at Twickenham but, according to Sheasby, they are not about to freeze on the biggest day in their club's 104-year history.
"You only freeze when you're not absolutely sure about what you're doing. We have 100 per cent confidence in how we start and restart the game. It's not a question of hoping Barry doesn't miss a particular kick because we're a team who work him down into a position on the field where he has a number of opportunities. He's getting between six and eight chances on average and even if he misses one or two he'll still have kicked four or five. Add that to the tries we know we can score and we will be competitive.
"We're a really close, tight-knit group. It makes a huge difference when you go on the pitch wanting to put your body on the line for the person next to you."
None of this comes as any surprise to the man who knows the inspirational Venter best - the former Springbok hooker Naka Drotske. "When I arrived here I saw all the newspapers saying we were going to get relegated," he said. "But I knew Brendan was going to make a difference.
"I've played with him since we were students and he was always the one standing up in meetings and making suggestions. There are a lot of foreigners here from different countries - Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Ireland and England - but the guys enjoy it, they don't worry about making mistakes, and you can see that on the field."
Both Venter and Drotske were in the South African squad who won the 1995 World Cup final against New Zealand and, if pushed, Drotske agrees there might just be "a little bit of bluff" about his friend's claims that Irish are treating today like any other game.
Everitt, though, will not be changing his deliberate kicking routine, despite having a potential match-winning conversion charged down by Harlequins' Dan Luger last Sunday "It's worked well all season. I'm not going to start tampering with it now."
Irish, collectively, will be thinking much the same.
Guardian Service
