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London Irish land All Black Naholo in shock coup for club

Seta Tamanivalu and Waisake Naholo

Fresh after officially confirming the signing of British and Irish Lions backrow Sean O’Brien, and London Irish have landed another huge name.

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Two weeks after first reporting the possibility of the mega-move, RugbyPass now understands that All Black Waisike Naholo has signed for the Reading-based club and that it will be officially confirmed in coming weeks.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BtHKjHLAu1H/

Irish beat Wasps to the Highlander’s signature, in what is the latest addition to a growing raft of big name international talent switching to the club.

The Declan Kidney coached side have confirmed the signing of Wallabies Nick Phipps and Curtis Rona, as well as Scottish loosehead Allan Dell.

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Currently ranked as the fourth best left wing in the world by the RugbyPass Index – Naholo has slipped down the All Blacks wing pecking order and his inclusion on the World Cup squad is very much in question.

Despite doing little wrong in an All Black jersey, critics of the Fijian born wing have pointed at a less rounded game than the likes of Nehe Milner-Skudder, Damien McKenzie, Jordie Barrett, Ben Smith and Rieko Ioane.

Naholo comes to the club as a confirmed try scorer and at 27 – is still in his prime.

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However, it’s not all been plain sailing for Irish, as the club are still to confirm their engine room. RugbyPass understands that Adam Coleman remains top of the wishlist, but that a deal to sign Tongan utility forward Steve Mafi has fallen through.

If the deal to sign Mafi has indeed fallen through, it will leave a considerable amount in the warchest to land the 6’8, 122kg Wallaby.

London Irish are set to bounce back up into the Premiership after a year in the Championship, and in the midst of serious rebuild – a rebuild that is being largely funded by the club’s share of the Premiership Rugby’s £200million minority stake sale to CVC Capital Partners.

London Irish confirmed in December that it would leave Reading after 18 years playing at the Madejski Stadium.

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The Madejski is around 30 miles away from its state-of-the-art training base in Sunbury and a move back to London had been on the cards.

The club confirmed they will be playing in London at the new Brentford Community Stadium from the start of the 2020/21 season.

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Flankly 1 hour ago
'Absolute madness': Clive Woodward rips into Borthwick in wake of NZ loss

Borthwick is supposed to be the archetypical conservative coach, the guy that might not deliver a sparkling, high-risk attacking style, but whose teams execute the basics flawlessly. And that's OK, because it can be really hard to beat teams that are rock solid and consistent in the rugby equivalent of "blocking and tackling".


But this is why the performance against NZ is hard to defend. You can forgive a conservative, back-to-basics team for failing to score tons of tries, because teams like that make up for it with reliability in the simple things. They can defend well, apply territorial pressure, win the set piece battles, and take their scoring chances with metronomic goal kicking, maul tries and pick-and-go goal line attacks.


The reason why the English rugby administrators should be on high alert is not that the English team looked unable to score tries, but that they were repeatedly unable to close out a game by executing basic, coachable skills. Regardless of how they got to the point of being in control of their destiny, they did get to that point. All that was needed was to be world class at things that require more training than talent. But that training was apparently missing, and the finger has to point at the coach.


Borthwick has been in the job for nearly two years, a period that includes two 6N programs and an RWC campaign. So where are the solid foundations that he has been building?

4 Go to comments
N
Nickers 1 hour ago
Scott Robertson responds to criticism over All Blacks' handling errors

Very poor understanding of what's going on and 0 ability to read. When I say playing behind the gain line you take this to mean all off-loads and site times we are playing in front of the gain line???


Every time we play a lot of rugby behind the gain line (for clarity, meaning trying to build an attack and use width without front foot ball 5m+ behind the most recent breakdown) we go backwards and turn the ball over in some way. Every time a player is tackled behind the most recent breakdown you need more and more people to clear out because your forwards have to go back around the corner, whereas opposition players can keep moving forward. Eventually you run out of either players to clear out or players to pass to and the result in a big net loss of territory and often a turnover. You may have witnessed that 20+ times in the game against England. This is a particularly dumb idea inside your own 40m which is where, for some reason, we are most likely to employ it.


The very best ABs teams never built an identity around attacking from poor positions. The DC era team was known for being the team that kicked the most. To engineer field position and apply pressure, and create broken play to counter attack. This current team is not differentiating between when a defence has lost it's structure and there are opportunities, and when they are completely set and there is nothing on. The reason they are going for 30 minute + periods in every game without scoring a single point, even against Japan and a poor Australian team, is because they are playing most of their rugby on the back foot in the wrong half.

43 Go to comments
LONG READ
LONG READ Mick Cleary: 'Borthwick needs to have faith in Marcus Smith' Mick Cleary: 'Borthwick needs to have faith in Marcus Smith'
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