Andy Goode and Brendan Venter get into a heated debate over Saracens
This week’s episode of The Rugby Pod was intriguing as former Saracens coach Brendan Venter called in to talk about his old team’s automatic relegation from the Premiership.
Rugby Pod host Andy Goode and South African Venter had exchanged some heated tweets in recent days in relation to Saracens being relegated from the top tier of English rugby.
The two men clashed on whether the Londoners were a dishonest club regarding the salary cap scandal that has enveloped them, or whether they were simply unaware of how bad their finances were.
Goode invited Venter to feature on the show after they had their disagreement online and Venter kept to his word, featuring on the podcast which was released early on Tuesday morning.
The ex-South Africa international claimed he has had a look at Saracens numbers and that the club was not far off making the salary cap limit that was needed to keep them in the Premiership.
https://twitter.com/AndyGoode10/status/1219220228728664064
“The amount involved is actually much smaller than the £2 million thrown around. I asked them about eight weeks ago what are we over? When the thing broke, I was like, this is not ideal, how much are we over? And nobody could tell me, nobody knew,” claimed Venter.
Goode, in contrast, asserted that it was far easier for players at Saracens to buy into the culture at the club when they very financially well off. Venter admitted it was former chairman Nigel Wray’s kindness that led the club to be in the state that it was in.
“Every time that a player needed to be kept, the player would go to Nigel personally and Nigel would broker a deal with him. And Nigel would always broker a deal around the joint investments thing.”
WATCH: Andy Goode and Brendan Venter didn’t hold back on this week’s The Rugby Pod as they discussed Saracens and the salary cap scandal