Last year, Alex Sanderson, the Saracens coach, had his car stolen from outside his house. Days passed without any contact from the police. Then officers from Trident, the Metropolitan Police’s gangland and gun division, knocked at his door.

“Turns out someone was kidnapped in it,” Sanderson says. “I didn’t choose the colour but it was an Audi A6, white with tinted windows, which is apparently the car of choice for drug dealers. Anyway, someone had done a drive-by shooting in Holloway, missed, dragged the guy into the car, stripped him, beat him up and dumped him.”

As he was quickly cleared of being a suspect in an attempted gangland hit, Sanderson can afford to look back and laugh. “I never did get the car back,” he says smiling, drink in hand at his local, the Southampton Arms in Gospel Oak.

There was less amusement at the time. The stresses and strains of coaching are all-consuming, never ceasing, even at a club as successful as Saracens. Incidents such as a stolen car, he says, “can just push you over the edge”. For a long time, Sanderson was past the edge, suffering from chronic insomnia for more than a year.

If Mark McCall, the director of rugby, is the brains behind the Saracens dynasty, then Sanderson is its beating heart. He has been at the club since 2004, but played just a single season before being forced to retire, aged 26, as a result of seven prolapsed discs. Eddie Jones, then director of rugby, instantly offered him a coaching role. Save for an ill-fated season with Jones at the Queensland Reds, Sanderson has been at Saracens ever since, holding a variety of roles.