Irish weren't given enough time - Ojo

LONDON Irish’s record try scorer Topsy Ojo says it’s regrettable that the club weren’t given more time to try and find someone to fund the club before their suspension from the Premiership in the first week of June. 

- NICK POWELL

Former England wing Ojo, 37, played 301 times for the Exiles between 2005 and 2019. He scored 80 tries in a club career laden with highlights that included scoring in their 2008 Heineken Cup semi-final defeat to Toulouse, reaching the European Challenge Cup and Premiership finals of 2006 and 2009 with the club respectively and winning the 2016/17 and 2018/19 Championship titles.

Since retiring in 2019 he has worked closely with the club as an ambassador for London Irish, but was left in a similar situation to many of the Exiles staff in feeling that he was not given the full story of just how much trouble the club were in as they tried to get an investment deal with an American consortium over the line.

Ojo said: “It did have a lot of similarities to Worcester and Wasps in terms of the final days. There were a lot of false promises and very little if any communication to the players and staff despite statements claiming otherwise.

“Everybody was in the same boat; I was being asked if I knew anything and I knew absolutely nothing. We were just waiting for news and a lot of the time stories would appear in the press before staff knew about them, which really goes to show you how things declined.