Last season’s Championship play-off final second leg was an exhausting affair for any spectator - let alone those with as much emotion and ambition invested in it as London Irish director of rugby Nick Kennedy.

After his side did enough to seal an immediate Premiership return on a sweltering late May evening, emerging on the right side of an absurd 55-48 scoreline against Yorkshire Carnegie, he admitted that he needed a rest.

The 34 year-old insisted that a celebratory squad drinking session and a family vacation constituted his only immediate plans. Even allowing for his active mind and meticulous nature, this was wishful thinking. Kennedy’s ear was welded to his mobile phone for most of a week in Majorca.

“The holiday didn’t happen,” he admits. “Well it did - I was away. But my wife wouldn’t call it a holiday. There was a lot of work to do. We were recruiting, organising and trying to put plans in place. We needed a couple of positions to make sure we’d be strong enough in the Premiership and that we’d have enough numbers for the A League as well.

“Then we were into analysing the Premiership further - what do we need to be doing in conditioning sessions, how has it moved on in in the last year? I think you can talk about training all you want - it’s still very difficult to be ready for something after a year away. It’s the top level, it’s the absolute elite.”