Paul Sackey: 'When I was at Wasps we played hard and partied hard'

Former Wasps wing Paul Sackey used to call the club, ‘The Orphanage’. Sackey’s one-time team-mate, lock, Simon Shaw, referred to it as a gathering place ‘for waifs and strays.’ Whatever it was that drew such a disparate band of characters together, from Warren Gatland and Shaun Edwards in the management team down to Sackey, Shaw, Lawrence Dallaglio and others, it proved to be one helluva formula for success.

As Wasps head to Twickenham on Saturday to tilt for their first Premiership title since 2008, they could do worse than invoke the spirit of the noughties when the team dominated the club scene, winning two Heineken Cups and four league titles.

• If any side can stop Exeter, it's Wasps — and this is how

Sackey, 40, was a Wasps original even if he did leave for Bedford and London Irish after graduating from the academy in the late nineties. He always knew that he would return to Wasps, which he sees as his spiritual home, and a place he was drawn to despite, or maybe because of, the "horrible" Spartan training facilities in Acton, befitting a down-to-earth side without airs and graces.

A former triallist with Middlesbrough and Crystal Palace, Sackey had to be persuaded to give rugby a try in the first place.

“I hated rugby and had to be dragged down there,” he recalls. “I loved football. I was quick and my teachers felt that suited rugby. I was spotted playing for my school, John Fisher in Purley, at the Rosslyn Park Sevens.”

The eagle-eyed scout was ground-breaking sports agent, Maria Pedro, who already had Jeremy Guscott on her books. She was not averse to ringing up Sackey’s dad, Paul Snr, to tell him that his son was bunking off training.

“Maria was a mentor to me, just wonderful,” said Sackey. “She took me under her wing. It was more like a youth training scheme than an academy. There was only a few of us. You had to muck in and get on with it.”

By the time Sackey returned to the Wasps fold in 2005, the Golden Age was under way.

“We worked hard, played hard and partied hard,” said Sackey. “We came from all different backgrounds. Gats was a great man-manager. He moulded us, treated us all the same, knew when to give you a cuddle, when to encourage you and when to tear a strip off you. There were no egos, Lol [Dallaglio] got a b******ing in front of everyone else, so did I, same as if it were the newest kid. That togetherness can take you a long way.”

Wasps had to scrap their way to the top. There was a "no excuses" mentality. Wasps were ahead of their time in shaping their fitness work to peak for the knockout stages. They used to go to Poland twice a season to use cryotherapy chambers as part of their conditioning programme overseen by Craig White, an arrangement that Gatland was to transfer so successfully to Wales and the Lions.

Wasps knocked Leicester off the top of the domestic perch, winning that 2008 final against them 26-16, a challenge that now presents itself to this generation of players as they set their targets on Exeter Chiefs.

“We never believed we would lose,” said Sackey. “Even in the tightest of corners, Lawrence [Dallaglio] would have us believing that anything was possible. It has been so good to see the way the Wasps boys have picked up this season. Lee [Blackett] has done a brilliant job with them and they have got to go into Saturday’s final with that same mentality.”

Sackey was a distinctive character for Wasps as well as for England, featuring in the 2007 team that got to the World Cup final in Paris and winning 22 caps. There was always a sense of difference about him, from his laid-back air to his part-time car-sourcing business where he would locate high-end vehicles for clients and sell them on. He has sold that business and, as well as property ventures, is pursuing different projects from his north London base. Sackey was a Wasps Ambassador for five years, travelling up to Coventry to help with community clinics and spreading the word.

“It’s taken the club a few years to create a new identity but they’ve done it and Saturday will be a great reward for them,” he said. “I really want them to experience what we did. I’m proud of what we achieved but I’m not selfish about guarding it. I want the next Wasps generation to flourish. Saturday is their chance.”