I’m no mercenary insists Piri Weepu

Piri Weepu has dismissed the notion that he is just another big name foreign mercenary looking to top up his pension fund.
Along with Olly Barkley, New Zealand’s World Cup-winning scrum-half is one of London Welsh‘s marquee signings. And the 30-year-old is determined to justify his billing as the Exiles look to take the new Premiership campaign by storm.
Weepu told The Rugby Paper: “I’m here to push this club as hard as I can and I’ll do everything possible for the team. Everything is about the team, not the individual, and if someone’s not pulling their weight, including me, I hope they’ll say it.
“There’s expectation but I just want to come here and do my job – and make sure I do it well.
“Back home I was always trying to help the younger players coming through and work on their skill-sets.
“If someone’s bad at tackling or passing, you get a teammate to help out and do everything possible to be on top of your game.
“We need to adopt that philosophy and make sure we get better as a squad and do better than they did here two years ago.”
Weepu suffered a minor stroke in March but recovered to complete the Super Rugby season with the Auckland Blues. He insists he is in great health, but concedes his fitness needs a tune-up ahead of next week’s opener against Exeter
“My health is 100 per cent but in terms of fitness it might be a bit different,” Weepu admitted. “I haven’t been doing too much pre-season or played any games since early July, so I’m playing catch-up there.
“I would have enjoyed playing a bit of rugby first just to get up to match-fitness, but it’ll come back pretty quickly.
“I’ve been working hard so, hopefully, I’ll get a crack next week.”
Weepu’s move to London came courtesy of a chance meeting with boss Justin Burnell at the Singapore 10s in June.
But he is delighted to be on board, adding: “After the stroke a lot of teams pulled their deals off the table, so I’m grateful to Justin.
“I’ve been playing rugby for the last 11 seasons and always wanted to see what the Premiership was like.
“You watch it on TV and speak to old teammates who’ve been here, so I just thought, ‘right, let’s give it a crack.
“My uncle, Earl Va’a, used to play for Richmond, Chris Noakes is up the road at London Irish and I keep in touch with Jimmy Gopperth.
“It’s a long season here but as long as I manage my body I should be okay.”
Weepu sees relieving the pressure on fly-half Olly Barkley as one of his main responsibilities.
He added: “We can’t expect Olly or our other first-fives to do everything for us.
“That’s something scrum-halves work on a lot in New Zealand and you’ve got to relieve that pressure and make big calls as well.
“Hopefully we can take the bull by the horns there and get to where we need to be quickly.”
NEALE HARVEY
*This article was first published in The Rugby Paper on August 31.