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Academy manager Simon Sinclair set to leave Northampton Saints

Simon Sinclair will be trading in this view for another at the end of the season. (Photo by Tony Marshall/Getty Images)

It’s shaping up to be a summer of change in a number of Gallagher Premiership academies, with four clubs set to shake up their coaching staffs.

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It was announced back in September that Bath Academy Manager Andy Rock would be stepping up to take on the role of Performance Director next season and the vacancy created by his promotion was finally advertised last week.

In that same week, Harlequins announced that long-serving Academy Director Tony Diprose would be moving on and Leicester Tigers began advertising for a new Academy Head Coach, with Jamie Taylor leaving the club after helping guide them to back-to-back Premiership U18 titles.

The latest name to join this growing list is Simon Sinclair, the Academy Manager at Northampton Saints, who the club announced today would be leaving at the end of the season.

“Simon’s contribution to Saints has been outstanding,” said Northampton CEO Mark Darbon.

“For the last 14 years he has been dedicated to helping develop and progress some of the players we see week in, week out at Franklin’s Gardens.

“He remains one of the most popular figures here at Saints and although we are always disappointed to see someone of his calibre go elsewhere, he leaves with our very best wishes.”

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Sinclair has helped oversee the development of the likes of James Grayson, Ehren Painter and Fraser Dingwall since taking over the role from Dusty Hare in 2017, whilst also playing a role in the emergence of players such as Lewis Ludlam and Mike Haywood during his time as Elite Player Development Manager.

Sinclair, alongside current Academy Head Coach Mark Hopley, has helped Northampton punch above their weight in terms of producing young players, with the region hemmed in heavily by the recruiting grounds of Saracens, Leicester and Wasps.

Grayson, Dingwall and Painter have all featured prominently for Saints this season and are one of the reasons why fans are getting excited about the trajectory of the club with Chris Boyd at the helm, who is rewarding youth with a chance in the first XV. Ludlam has been another to take that opportunity with both hands and the back rower has been one of the most consistently impressive players in the Premiership so far this season.

Saints have also contributed strongly to the current group of England U20s, with Dingwall available when not on club duty and Samson Ma’asi, Alex Coles and Ollie Sleightholme all making their presences felt in the pathway side.

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“Saints has been an enormous part of my life for the last 14 years and I will miss the club greatly,” said Sinclair.

“It has been a privilege to work at an organisation that has allowed me to develop as a coach and trusted me to help develop the next generation of players.

“Leading the Academy has been an incredibly rewarding job and it makes the whole staff very proud to see young players come through the system and put on a first team shirt.

“The Academy has a talented group of staff and I have no doubt they will continue to thrive – I would like to thank them all for their support but in particular Mark Hopley, Paul Shields and Katherine Burrows.

“These are exciting times for Saints and I wish Chris Boyd, the management team and all the staff the very best of luck for the years ahead.”

Sinclair, a former Framlingham College director of sport, is now set to return to the school arena, taking up a role with the Bedford Modern School once he has finished up with Northampton at the end of the season.

Watch: Eddie Jones is aiming to settle a score with Scotland on Saturday

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J
JW 2 hours ago
Does South Africa have a future in European competition?

I rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.


He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.


The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).


The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.


The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).


It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.

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