With a place in the England Saxons’ squad, London Irish flanker Steffon Armitage is fast stealing the limelight from his older brother Delon…
How are you Steffon?
I’m fine thank you, just finished a bit of training and feeling fit.
So Rovigo, what do you know?
I’m not going to lie to you I know absolutely nothing, I looked at their league on the internet and they’re seventh but I really don’t know anything else. We’ve got some clips of them on the system now though, but we don’t know any of the guys who play for them – looking forward to finding out.
Must make it a bit hard to play them?
I think the coaches know about them and found out how they’re playing at the moment so they’ve training us to play how we need to play.
And how’s that?
Like we do every game, we’re going to go in hard and really confront people, I don’t think we did that last season. We need to bully sides in the way Wasps and Leicester do, but we won’t take Rovigo for granted…
The Challenge Cup is a bit of a step down from last season?
Yeah definitely and we’re disappointed not to get back in [the Heinkene Cup], but we want to win this tournament. We’re taking this serious and it’s one of the ways to get back into the Heineken Cup so we want to show we deserve to be in the top tier.
How you finding the season so far?
I think all the boys are enjoying it, I certainly am personally. We’ve have a couple of games that we should have won and didn’t, but we’re a different team on the pitch and I think every side has stepped up to the plate from last year too.
What’s the difference this year?
I think teams are starting to realise that Wasps and Leicester have won so many Premiership titles by bullying people off the park with the likes of Dallaglio and Corry. Now everyone is pushing themselves on the pitch…
You almost beat Leicester…
Personally I think we should’ve won it, we had a few missed kicks but you can’t blame it on that. We had linebreaks but couldn’t finish them – we have to cut down our errors too. We’ve got guys like Delon and Topsy in the backline who can all make breaks we just need to get out there and support them.
What’s brought the change though?
I just think all the boys want to play flowing rugby, we want to run the ball instead of kicking and we’ve got a lot of young players with a lot of flair who want to prove a point. Then we’ve got old heads like Bob Casey and Pete Richards to calm it all down – it works well.
Sure they’ll appreciate being called ‘old’?
Ah yeah but they know it, I love them to bits but they are old!
Good start to the season for you what with England Saxons and all?
Yeah definitely, there’s quite a lot of flankers in the Premiership and it’s just been good to be given a chance to show what I can do. I can prove them right, so I’m going out there and playing my heart out week-in, week-out.
Is there still talk of you switching to front row?
No, fingers crossed they’ve stopped but I’m willing to try anything. As long as I can play I’ll jump in anywhere, I’d take kicks if they let me. I was hoping to get a run out in the centre last weekend but they decided against it!
Where do you prefer to play?
Mainly openside and that’s where they’re looking at me with England. It was a surprise to get in with the Saxons, I had a good tournament in Canada but there’s so many guys in my position – Will Skinner, Ben Woods, Chris Robshaw… So I was pretty happy!
Was your brother Delon disappointed?
I know if he didn’t get injured in the last two months of the season he might have been in the squad but he’s pushing really hard to get back in January…
Realistically is the squad good enough for the top four?
Definitely, because we’ve got players to step in and do the job – that’s what’s good about this club. Even though we have a smaller squad than others, everyone is ready to slot in. Everyone wants to be a leader, everyone’s pushing and then in the backline we’ve got people willing to play in any position. We’ve also got a lot of players, like Shane and Catty, coming back from injury so it’s going to be hard to pick the side soon. I just hope to keep my shirt!
Has Toby changed in his new role?
To me, Toby has always been the same, he’s always talking to me personally – I don’t think he’s changed because he’s always been like this. He’s doing a great job and everyone has a great respect for him. We want to make his job easy by performing well. He likes the physical game, he wants us to boss the game and take sides on upfront before getting it wide.
So it’s the play-offs or nothing then?
Yes, definitely, all the boys want the same thing – a play-off position. We need to work hard, week-in, week-out and if we don’t it will be a failure.