All Black great Chris Jack is set to be released along with 14 of his Saracens teammates and will be replaced by mainly South African players, the BBC said on Tuesday.
According to the BBC, incoming South African head coach Brendan Venter — the defense coach at Super 14 side the Stormers and who will effectively replace former Australia coach Eddie Jones — informed the players on Monday, though, the club would not confirm that was the case.
“It would be completely inappropriate for the club to make any specific comment on these private meetings,” the club said in a statement. “Many of the players were enthused and excited by what they heard; inevitably, some were disappointed.”
Saracens are largely run by a group of South African investors who also have a stake in provincial sides the Sharks and the Stormers in their home country. It is believed that the players who have been told they will not be retained will be replaced largely by players from those two Super 14 squads.
The English Premiership club did add that they were trying to help the players sort out their futures.
“The club is already working with the various players’ agents and the PRA [Professional Rugby Players’ Association] to assist in securing their futures, and, without exception, the club will act decently and honestly,” the statement said.
“This has been a difficult week, but the reality is that Saracens is not immune to the economic realities being faced by many companies across the country,” it said.
Jones, who acted as a special consultant for the 2007 World Cup winning South Africans, announced on Feb. 9 that he would not be staying on after the end of the season for “personal reasons” despite holding a three year contract and having been in the post for just a year.
Venter, a former Springbok international, has previous experience in England having coached London Irish.
Jack, who won 67 caps for the All Blacks till joining Saracens midway through the 2007-2008 campaign, has made 25 appearances for the club scoring three tries for them.
The 30-year-old lock enjoyed a successful career with the Canterbury Crusaders, being named Super 12 player of the year in 2002 and New Zealand player of the season in the same year.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier