New Captain Itoje looking to 'lead by example'

New Club Captain Maro Itoje spoke to the press earlier this week for the first time since being unveiled, with a wealth of national media joining him at the StoneX offices in front of the iconic Tower Bridge in Central London.

Itoje had a press conference, broadcast interviews and photo opportunities as he laid out his vision as skipper with the Gallagher Premiership season now upon us. 

The 29-year-old, who has 181 Saracens appearances, 84 England caps and two Lions tours to his name has big plans in North London.

“I want to try and be as authentically myself as possible. I want to lead in ways that are natural to me. I want to take advantage and knowledge and expertise in the room, both from a coaching point of view as well as a playing point of view. I want to lean on my team-mates who have vast experience and hopefully empower some of the younger guys to take more ownership.” Said the new skipper. 

One main observation he has had since returning from England duty is the younger players who are all looking to make their mark this season.

“I've really been impressed by the amount of talent we have coming through the academy. This season you're going to see a lot of young players really step up and part of my role - and it would have been part of my role regardless of whether I held this position or not - is to help those guys find their feet and be bit of a guide and help them achieve what they want to achieve.”

At both domestic and international level, Itoje has played under some of the best leaders in the history of the sport, and he will be looking to follow in their footsteps for the Men in Black.

“All of them have influenced me. You take something from all of them. Most recently Owen. Owen was a fantastic leader who led incredibly well for a number of years. He had a great service for both club and country.

Brad Barritt was also a phenomenal leader. He was extremely competitive on the field. He had a good feel for the group, spoke really well, articulated himself really well.

I spent a season under Steve and that was definitely vert interesting and informative for me to watch how diligent and professional he was, to watch how he led the guys.

There are a whole lot of different leaders who I have played with and trained with that have influenced me.

Neil de Kock was a fantastic leader in my early days. He is to this day one of the nicest people who I have ever come across.

More recently, people like Billy and Mako lead in very different ways. They were fantastic leaders for this club and country.

I will look to take a lot from all of those guys and there are so many I haven't named.

I want to be myself and lead in my own way. Everyone has their own way of doing things and I plan on doing it.”

The 29-year-old has always been an energetic leader on the pitch with his relentless performances, and he stressed that performance is still the number one priority. 

“What I envisage to do is first and foremost, to be a good leader you have to lead by example and people will follow you. They definitely won’t follow you if you are not standing by or doing what you say, walk the walk and that is how I envisage going about my business. I want to lead by example and make sure my performance level stay high. I don’t want to deviate too much from what has made me the man/player I am today.

I like to have this confrontational playing style, I want to continue with that, I look to be a high energy sort of player and I want to lean on the quality around me, I am fortunate to have a lot of  quality around me and I don’t intend on doing it all by myself. We have so many leaders in our squad. We have established leaders and leaders coming up and collectively will do a great job.”

He also acknowledged some of the leaders from other sports as well as politics which he will be looking to learn from.

“A lot my heroes are leaders. I studied politics at university and one of my heroes is Kwame Nkrumah the first president of Ghana. His energy, his passion, his conviction for what he believed, Ghanaian independence and African independence for me was very inspirational reading about it and learning about.

One of my big sporting idols was Muhammad Ali. In a similar vein, I have so much respect for him for what he did in the ring, I have even more respect for what he did outside of the ring. People like that are people I tend to lean towards. I am a big Arsenal fan, During the 2000s, Patrick Vieira was in his prime and in his pomp. He was a big hero of mine.”

The second-rower also revealed the moment he was told the news that he would be taking on the armband. 

“Towards the end of the England tour Smally always wishes us good luck for matches, mostly via text. He did that as he always does and he also extended the conversation, talking about a few other things, and he said: 'let's catch up when you're back from the tour.' 

That's not necessarily unusual so I didn't read too much into it. Then he followed up during the off-season when I was in Nigeria, saying we should catch up when I was back from my holiday. The fact he did two texts in relatively quick succession made me think he might want to have a conversation - but I didn't know which way it would go. It made sense to me that he wanted to talk about it. We met at a coffee shop in Harpenden, we spoke a bit about the squad, the new players, the direction, and then he asked me if I would consider leading the team.

After he asked me I told him ‘thank you’, I was very humbled and honoured that he would consider me for this position and I told him yes. My yes to him wasn’t as quick as my fiancee’s yes to me!"

Saracens are starting a new era this season, and with Itoje at the centre of it there is no doubt that exciting times are ahead of us!