Wray could pull the plug on Sarries

By Jason Harris
April 25 2003

Saracens benefactor Nigel Wray has said that his hitherto unstinting backing for the club could well come to and end if they are relegated form the Zurich Premiership.

In an inteview with the Watford Observer Wray, whose investment in Sarries has been around £13m, said that he "wouldn't mind" being part of a joint backing, but he would not be prepared to go it alone.

Saracens face Bristol Shoguns on Tuesday in a crunch relegation showdown that could possibly see the end of one of the clubs as a professional entity.

Wray highlighted the simlarities between Sarries and the Shoguns when he said "You've seen the problem at Bristol. Malcolm Pearce [Bristol benefactor] has run Bristol for the last five years and he's now now asking the question 'who's going to help me'? The answer seems to be nobody is going to help."

The 53-year-old businessman is still scathing about the way the game is stuctured, particuarly in England, and he is becoming more disgruntled with his lot.

When asked if his desire was still as strong as it was at the start of his association with Saracens he told the Observer "No, it's absolutely not. I've waited seven years for the game to organise itself and the two problems that have bedevilled us from the start, relegation and the lack of structure to the season, are still here and we haven't answered the questions."

Although Wray belives that Sarries can avoid the drop into National League One and probable oblivion, he lays some of the blame for another under-achieving season at the door of the players and coaching staff.

"The players have dug their own graves," he said."An extremely poor performance against London Irish at home left us in trouble and now we have just got to play properly against Bristol. It's always frustrating but especially so as I believe we've got a squad of players who should be performing far better than they are doing at present. If we all knew what the problem was then we'd all go round fixing it. The problem is more complicated than that.

"But the coaching staff and players can hardly look at themselves with enormous pride. There's nothing I can do about it so there's not much point in worrying about it enormously. It's up to the guys on the field."

Sarries will have one of their biggest number of away supporters at Bath on Saturday, but Wray thinks that in order to survive, the home gates at Vicarage Road would need to be between 12,000 and 15,000.

A lot of responsiblity for any resurgence will lie with new CEO Mark Sinderberry, formerly of the ACT Brumbies. Sinderberry has his work cut out as Wray admits that things at Sarries have not been done as well as they might have been.

"In Mark Sinderberry we have the perfect guy to run the club. His is the crucial role really as in any business someone has got to run it and run it well and obviously we have significantly failed to do that for a number of years."

Wray, Sinderberry, the players, coaches and supporters will hope that the side will survive this season and become challengers for silverware in subsequent seasons.