Interview by Colin Spiro Photos by Eoin Mundow
TOULON RENAISSANCE
Paul Sackey burst onto the international scene in 2007 in France at the Rugby World Cup becoming England’s top try scorer at the tournament and helping his team reach the Final against South Africa. Following five successful years at Wasps in the Premiership and having come back from a serious injury which has left him out in the cold by current England coach Martin Johnson, the flying winger has opted for a new challenge and followed Jonny Wilkinson to France to play for a resurgent Toulon side. We catch up with Paul at his new home just outside Toulon on the Cote D’Azur. How and why did you come to France and Toulon, and was anyone else interested? There were a few clubs interested, there was a few in England and a couple in France, but the ones in France were in cities and I’ve been in London and I said if I was going to move then I wanted to move to the coast and Toulon was really the only place I wanted to go and fortunately for me they were interested in me. I was never going to go anywhere else in England after Wasps, I support them even now and so for me there was no other English club. So Toulon was the only club I wanted to come to in France and fortunately for me they were interested in me and I was lucky enough to make the move.
Toulon or did Philippe Saint-Andre contact you, because I’ve read he’s tried to sign you twice before? He did indeed. The thing was obviously clubs know when you are out of contract and everything else, so I think it might have been a little bit of both – I don’t know, I never said anything. I was told that Toulon was interested, so I said ‘yeah, I’m happy to talk to them and see what the story is’ and for me looking from the outside they’ve been very ambitious and they’re a determined side and they’ve got good coaches and obviously last year they showed that they are very ambitious and they want to win stuff. So for me it was an unbelievable opportunity. I always want to be at clubs that Am I right in thinking the other clubs in France are ambitious and want to go forward and win were Racing and Toulouse? trophies, which is why I was at Wasps for such (long pause) Maybe. a long period of time. How did the mechanics of the move happen? Did you tell your agent you want to go to 68
Did you speak to any of your Wasps mates about moving to France, like Haskell and Tom