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Cash rich Sale Sharks to search globe for player - Diamond

USA playmaker AJ MacGinty. (Photo by Getty Images)

AJ MacGinty, the USA Eagles No10, is waiting to discover how seriously he damaged his knee helping defeat Harlequins 30-29 and Sale are set to launch a world wide search for a replacement to get them through the rest of the season.

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The short term option for Steve Diamond, the Sale director of rugby, will be Australian international James O’Connor who started at full back against Quins but has considerable experience in the play-maker role. O’Connor’s chequered career has included spells at London Irish and Toulon and now he finds himself with the responsibility of ensuring Sale finish in the top of the Premiership to guarantee European Champions Cup rugby next season.

MacGinty, 27-years-old, has been in excellent form for Sale having struggled with a leg injury last season and Diamond admits his loss is a massive blow but he does have room in the playing budget to bring in a quality No10 and stay within the salary cap.

He said:”We’ve been building the side around AJ. It took him a year to settle in with us but he’s a phenomenal goal-kicker and a great defender and he understands the game really well.

“So it’s a bit of a loss for us but we’ll be seeing more of James O’Connor at 10 in the next batch of games and I might even go around the world looking for another one.

“We’re in a good position in the league and because we don’t spend the money that some of these other teams spend, we do have a huge reserve there so we might go to have a look at whether we can get a number ten to see us through to the end of the season to help James and Sam James.”

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J
JW 5 hours ago
'Let's not sugarcoat it': Former All Black's urgent call to protect eligibility rules

Yep, no one knows what will happen. Thing is I think (this is me arguing a point here not a random debate with this one) they're better off trialing it now in a controlled environment than waiting to open it up in a knee jerk style reaction to a crumbling organtization and team. They can always stop it again.


The principle idea is that why would players leave just because the door is ajar?


BBBR decides to go but is not good enough to retain the jersey after doing it. NZ no longer need to do what I suggest by paying him to get back upto speed. That is solely a concept of a body that needs to do what I call pick and stick wth players. NZR can't hold onto everyone so they have to choose their BBBRs and if that player comes back from a sabbatical under par it's a priority to get him upto speed as fast as possible because half of his competition has been let go overseas because they can't hold onto them all. Changing eligibility removes that dilemma, if a BBBR isn't playing well you can be assured that someone else is (well the idea is that you can be more assured than if you only selected from domestic players).


So if someone decides they want to go overseas, they better do it with an org than is going to help improve them, otherwise theyre still basically as ineligible as if they would have been scorning a NZ Super side that would have given them the best chance to be an All Black.

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