MANU TUILAGI’S FUTURE
“We want him and he wants to stay. We had no money, then we had a bit of money. Now we have twice as much money as we did have. I am going to Lymm tomorrow to sit down with him to see if it’s enough. I know he wants to stay so this is a question of if his family can survive off it and how much is he willing to sacrifice. I guess I will be buying lunch.
“There is not a deadline so to speak but we want it sorted as soon as possible. I would hope to say in the next couple of weeks and I think he will want that as well.
“First off there was the necessity for what the squad needs long-term. So we needed a robust, youngish centre who fitted in with the demographic of the squad and there was money for that position. Manu was the marquee player so if you take him out of the marquee status it then goes off the average of the previous three years’ salary. What we had left in the salary cap at that time with the predictions we had for next year with everyone staying on and everyone who was contracted at the time wanting to stay on was to the tune of around £70,000. That equated out to be something like £250-300,000. Even then why would he take that when he was being offered whatever he was rumoured to have been offered abroad. It was insulting to offer something like that to him. These things, if you have a will and a want for them, have a way of working out.
“So there has been a bit of movement in terms of who we are able to retain next year which has freed more money up in the cap and there is further injury dispensation which allows more money to be released. This has meant we have been able to go back and offer significantly more than we were able to 6-7 months ago. We knew this could happen because money does shift around. So we have been able to go back to Manu who has stayed off from signing a contract. It is still less than what is being offered abroad. He knows that and I have been honest about that. We will see if it’s enough.”
AKKER VAN DER MERWE’S FUTURE
“He is not going back to South Africa next year, not from my understanding, and he wants to sign an extension. So I said I would sit down with him this week and we want to give him an extension because he is world-class. When his body and head is right he is world-class, one of the best in the world. And I like him as he adds a lot around the place. We will be looking to extend him, not let him go.”
EWAN ASHMAN’S FUTURE
“Any luring from Scotland by way of Ewan Ashman is and has been going on for years. To Edinburgh, where his girlfriend is, where his uncle is and played, where his Dad is from. So there are a lot of pulls there aside from impending salary cap. It’s something we have talked about and something they have tried to do in the past. So I think it is important to make the distinction between Steve Diamond and Ewan Ashman and the connection between Ewan Ashman and the SRU and their overtures towards him. We don’t want to keep anyone who isn’t happy here, that doesn’t work for me. There are discussions and he is a great player. I think the best of him is yet to come. If he thinks his best opportunity is at Edinburgh then that’s something we will have to come to terms with. At the moment nothing has been signed on that front.”
CENTRAL CONTRACTS
“I think that would be the best thing for everyone if they the players were centrally contracted and then released back to the clubs because we don’t have control over them anyway right now as it is. Looking at it from the RFU’s perspective why would you bother? They get the retention of the players as it is anyway. They get the time they want all be it not all the time they want and they don’t have the risk with long-term injuries. The clubs pick up the bill if a player gets injured and the RFU pick another player. So why would central contracts benefit the RFU? It would certainly benefit clubs like Saracens and hopefully with where we are going with an increasing number of international players because we would have more money to spend on infrastructure as well as playing squad.”
INJURY UPDATE
Cobus Wiese- Knee injury as bad as it gets, fractured knee with ACL and meniscal tears, 6-9 months
Tom Curry- still waiting on him for this weekend, his availability will be confirmed on Thursday, very close, will be either this week or next
Akker van der Merwe, Nick Schonert fully fit and good to go, up for selection
Connor Doherty- back in training, looking sharp
OTHER NEWS
Club have signed a player in the back five of the scrum, a week before Cobus Wiese’s knee injury, looking to get injury dispensation as well
Players had first week off, those players who have had a lot of game time recently, Wayne Hoyle has been in with the players, hard-working week last week
Succession planning for a few years into the future- keeping core group of the squad together, spoke about staggering contracts so that there aren’t lots of players out of contract at the same time
Only 1 or 2 out of the 45 positions in the squad that are still being discussed, very lucky that bulk of the squad is aged between 22-28, big focus on retention which has been very purposeful
Importance of Challenge Cup this weekend- finding form and getting cohesion between players who haven’t necessarily played that much together either through injury or the Six Nations
Planning for salary cap to be at the same level in 2024-25, willing to spend up to cap if it goes up but financially it probably doesn’t make much sense for the Premiership salary cap to go back up
With current salary cap it might be an idea to allow the England head coach to pick players from international waters, South African model has shown that it is possible to have players playing abroad and still win a World Cup. There are extenuating circumstances at the moment with Covid and clubs going under which require more wriggle room to get best international team leading up to the World Cup
Manu looks fresh, sharp in training and training with England has benefitted him
2 players have made their own decisions to retire
First worked with Jamie Langley whilst at Saracens just before Covid on technical, contact aspects of the game
Thanks again Kieran - great work. 😎
Any news on Poss?