Billy Vunipola has 'broken forearm' and unlikely to play part in Six Nations

Billy Vunipola’s Six Nations looks to be over before it started after Saracens coach Alex Sanderson says they believe the England No.8 has broken his arm.

It’s a major blow for Eddie Jones’ England and Saracens, who learned that they are to be relegated from the Premiership this season.

Vunipola was removed from the pitch just minutes into Saracens’ Heineken Champions Cup clash with Racing 92 at Allianz Park.

Racing sealed top spot in Pool 4 last weekend with a bonus point victory over Munster Rugby, so their objective in north London will be to earn a home quarter-final while Saracens realistically have to win to have any chance of qualifying as a best runner-up.

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The North London club need to win the Champions Cup if they are to appear in next season’s competition.

Vunipola’s arm break adds to the current misery besetting Saracens. This morning the club said they “unreservedly apologise” for the mistakes made in relation to the Salary Cap Regulations.

“Our goal is to rebuild confidence and trust. The first step was to appoint a new independent chairman to lead on governance reform ensuring errors of the past are not replicated in the future. Furthermore, following open and frank discussions with PRL, we have accepted the unprecedented measure of automatic relegation from the Premiership at the end of the 2019-2020 season.

BREAKING:

Saracens issue club statementhttps://t.co/JYHsVkA2jP

— RugbyPass (@RugbyPass) January 19, 2020

“We understand this decision will be difficult for the Saracens family to accept. The Board must embody the values of the club, learn from its mistakes so the Club can come back stronger. It is in the wider interests of the Premiership and English rugby to take this decisive step, to ensure everybody is able once again to focus on the game of rugby, which we all love.

“We hope that we can now start to move forward, begin to restore confidence and over time, rebuild trust with PRL, its stakeholders and the wider rugby community.”

During the 2016 Six Nations, he was named Man of the Match for Scotland-England, England-Ireland and France-England.

Born in Sydney, Australia, to Tongan parents before moving to Wales with his family in 1998 when the
agent Phil Kingsley Jones offered to help fix his father Fe’ao a two?year contract playing for Pontypool. His father, Fe’ao, is a former Tonga captain who competed at RWC 1995 and 1999.