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The magnificent 7 Sale Sharks being sent to Springboks training camp

Faf de Klerk /Getty

Steve Diamond has revealed Sale Sharks will be sending seven players to join the Springboks training squad – minus the injured Lood de Jager – which will affect his squad for the start of next season’s Gallagher Premiership and Heineken European Cup.

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Diamond has recruited heavily from South Africa and with Springbok assistant coach Felix Jones now based in Dublin to monitor the European based players, their form has seen an unprecedented call up from Sale who are second the Gallagher Premiership.

However, World Cup winner Lood de Jager will not be travelling back to South Africa as he is preparing to discover how long his latest shoulder injury will keep him out of the game. De Jager was injured in the 40-31 win over Leicester and will have another scan today on the shoulder to reveal the extent of what is believed to be ligament damage.

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‘I was Never Alone’ Sir Ian McGeechan

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Diamond accepts he will have to operate without those seven players during the November test period but is confident his squad can still be competitive in the Premiership and the Heineken Champions Cup fixtures that will be played. The seven are; Rohan Janse van Rensburg, Faf de Klerk, Coenie Oosthuizen, Akker van der Merwe, Dan, Rob and Jean-Luc du Preez.

Diamond said: “There will be seven players minus Lood going to join the Springbok squad. Lood will have his scan this afternoon and the x-rays are positive and there doesn’t seem to be any distress but we will wait for the MRI scan and get him to see one of the specialists. I am fairly optimistic but he won’t be playing in the next tens days and it looks there is no structural damage but there may be some ligament damage.

Diamond Sale de Jager
Sale Sharks Springboks lock Lood de Jager (Photo by David Rogers/Getty Images)

“Rohan is playing well and he is on the Springbok radar because has been called up to the squad going to join their training camp at the end of our season or after the play-offs. Every South African I have got with the exception of Cobus Wiese has been called up including Akker and Coenie. We don’t lose them until the end of the season and as Rob Baxter said ( about the start of next season) we have two league games and two European games and something has to give.

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“Equally so, my Dirty Dozen as I call my mid-week team went out and beat Wasps who are beating everybody at the moment. I have a good squad that will scrap in those first two games if I haven’t got the South African players. “

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J
JW 1 hour ago
'Passionate reunion of France and New Zealand shows Fabien Galthie is wrong to rest his stars'

Ok, managed to read the full article..

... New Zealand’s has only 14 and the professional season is all over within four months. In France, club governance is the responsibility of an independent organisation [the Ligue Nationale de Rugby or LNR] which is entirely separate from the host union [the Fédération Française de Rugby or FFR]. Down south New Zealand Rugby runs the provincial and the national game.

That is the National Provincial Championship, a competition of 14 representative union based teams run through the SH international window and only semi professional (paid only during it's running). It is run by NZR and goes for two and a half months.


Super Rugby is a competition involving 12 fully professional teams, of which 5 are of New Zealand eligibility, and another joint administered team of Pacific Island eligibility, with NZR involvement. It was a 18 week competition this year, so involved (randomly chosen I believe) extra return fixtures (2 or 3 home and away derbys), and is run by Super Rugby Pacific's own independent Board (or organisation). The teams may or may not be independently run and owned (note, this does not necessarily mean what you think of as 'privately owned').


LNR was setup by FFR and the French Government to administer the professional game in France. In New Zealand, the Players Association and Super Rugby franchises agreed last month to not setup their own governance structure for professional rugby and re-aligned themselves with New Zealand Rugby. They had been proposing to do something like the English model, I'm not sure how closely that would have been aligned to the French system but it did not sound like it would have French union executive representation on it like the LNR does.

In the shaky isles the professional pyramid tapers to a point with the almighty All Blacks. In France the feeling for country is no more important than the sense of fierce local identity spawned at myriad clubs concentrated in the southwest. Progress is achieved by a nonchalant shrug and the wide sweep of nuanced negotiation, rather than driven from the top by a single intense focus.

Yes, it is pretty much a 'representative' selection system at every level, but these union's are having to fight for their existence against the regime that is NZR, and are currently going through their own battle, just as France has recently as I understand it. A single focus, ala the French game, might not be the best outcome for rugby as a whole.


For pure theatre, it is a wonderful article so far. I prefer 'Ntamack New Zealand 2022' though.

The young Crusader still struggles to solve the puzzle posed by the shorter, more compact tight-heads at this level but he had no problem at all with Colombe.

It was interesting to listen to Manny during an interview on Maul or Nothing, he citied that after a bit of banter with the All Black's he no longer wanted one of their jersey's after the game. One of those talks was an eye to eye chat with Tamaiti Williams, there appear to be nothing between the lock and prop, just a lot of give and take. I thought TW angled in and caused Taylor to pop a few times, and that NZ were lucky to be rewarded.

f you have a forward of 6ft 8ins and 145kg, and he is not at all disturbed by a dysfunctional set-piece, you are in business.

He talked about the clarity of the leadership that helped alleviate any need for anxiety at the predicaments unfolding before him. The same cannot be said for New Zealand when they had 5 minutes left to retrieve a match winning penalty, I don't believe. Did the team in black have much of a plan at any point in the game? I don't really call an autonomous 10 vehicle they had as innovative. I think Razor needs to go back to the dealer and get a new game driver on that one.

Vaa’i is no match for his power on the ground. Even in reverse, Meafou is like a tractor motoring backwards in low gear, trampling all in its path.

Vaa'i actually stops him in his tracks. He gets what could have been a dubious 'tackle' on him?

A high-level offence will often try to identify and exploit big forwards who can be slower to reload, and therefore vulnerable to two quick plays run at them consecutively.

Yes he was just standing on his haunches wasn't he? He mentioned that in the interview, saying that not only did you just get up and back into the line to find the opposition was already set and running at you they also hit harder than anything he'd experienced in the Top 14. He was referring to New Zealands ultra-physical, burst-based Super style of course, which he was more than a bit surprised about. I don't blame him for being caught out.


He still sent the obstruction back to the repair yard though!

What wouldn’t the New Zealand rugby public give to see the likes of Mauvaka and Meafou up front..

Common now Nick, don't go there! Meafou showed his Toulouse shirt and promptly got his citizenship, New Zealand can't have him, surely?!?


As I have said before with these subjects, really enjoy your enthusiasm for their contribution on the field and I'd love to see more of their shapes running out for Vern Cotter and the like styled teams.

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