Toby Booth neared the end of 2008 with an award as Guinness Premiership coach of the month. What chance that he can keep London Irish firing sufficiently in the new year to become coach of the season? Given that the exiles slipped from the top of the tree against Saracens in their previous outing, Booth will be wary of any such prediction, but the landscape is changing for him and his players.

Not for eight years have Irish had the chance to look down on their Premiership rivals and they could be back in pole position after tomorrow’s home game against Newcastle Falcons. “We have moved from happy underdogs to expectant favourites,” Booth said, and they have certainly reached a situation he could not have envisaged when he was playing his rugby with Folkestone, then Blackheath, while working as an electrician.

His is not the usual path to managing a Premiership club. Booth, 38, has no elite background while alongside him is Mike Catt, capped 75 times by England, a Lion, a Heineken Cup winner with Bath and now smoothly combining a role as player and attack coach. But throw in the vital work of Allan Ryan, the conditioning coach, and you have a young, enthusiastic panel aided by the work they all did under Brian Smith, who is now England’s attack coach.

Booth contends that what he did in his former occupation is even more valuable in his present context. “My man-management comes from my time on building sites,” he said. “I loved my job as a sparkie, it’s a life experience which is entirely relevant to what I do now. You have to know which buttons to press, have a good feel for people, know how to get your concepts across.”

While he was a forward with Blackheath, Booth also had a significant encounter with Graham Henry, now New Zealand’s coach but then coach to Auckland Blues, who were examining the possibility of an exchange link with Blackheath. The meeting laid down a vital first principle. “I talked to Graham about how the game should be played and he said the key was getting over the gain line from first phase, that everything else came from that,” Booth said. “I took that with me when I started to study at St Mary’s College in Twickenham.”

From his belated university education, Booth emerged with a BSc in biology and sports science and became director of sport at St Mary’s while still player-coach at Blackheath. It gave him access to the college first XV on whom he tested his coaching theories.

“We like to be innovative, players buy into that, it keeps them fresh mentally,” he said. “We try people in different positions, we don’t have a specialist No 10 – probably the only club who does that. I made the mistake in my playing career of not moving from the back row to the front row until late on, so I’m always prepared to look at individuals in different areas.”

The game with Newcastle, under Steve Bates, will bring together the two coaches who worked well with the England Saxons in last year’s Churchill Cup. England’s senior squad will have a vacancy for a scrummaging coach when they tour Argentina in June because Graham Rowntree will be away with the Lions and the odds on Booth stepping up must surely be shortening.