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Man who axed 18 Saracens 'mercenaries' has no fears for club's future

Maro Itoje

Brendan Venter and Schalk Brits, two of the architects of Saracens’ success, have dismissed fears that looming job and pay cuts will seriously undermine the club’s bid to avoid relegation from the Gallagher Premiership in the wake of the salary cap scandal.

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Venter, the former Saracens director of rugby, axed 18 players including All Black lock Chris Jack on what became known as “Black Monday” in 2009 as he dramatically changed the culture of a club that has since won five Premiership and three Heineken European Cup titles.

Brits, a member of South Africa’s 2019 World Cup-winning squad in Japan, spent a decade at Saracens and helped forge the close bonds that are now under strain by the need to cut costs and dismantle the squad.

The reigning English and European champions were fined £5.3million and docked 35 league points for failing to comply with the £7m salary cap over the last three seasons and Edward Griffiths, the interim chief executive, is currently working to identify how they can show the rest of the Premiership the club is operating within the cap.

Saracens are 18 points adrift at the bottom of the league and will face the next five rounds of Premiership games without their England players who will be involved in the Six Nations.

(Continue reading below…)

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Wales full-back Liam Williams is heading back to the Scarlets while back row forwards Calum Clark and Michael Rhodes – plus Argentina prop Juan Figallo – appear likely to follow him out of the club as the wage bill is trimmed.

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It is a troubling time for everyone involved with Saracens but Venter told RugbyPass: “The team we took over 2009 was not the current side. It was a broken team full of rugby mercenaries. This team is a proper rugby team that has been galvanised over ten years and my hope for them is that they prove the world wrong and that it was not about money at Saracens. It was the way people treated us with respect and looked after our families.

“I am sure that the current group, even if they have to make sacrifices, will still perform and that will be the biggest compliment to Nigel Wray (the club owner) despite having to go through so much in a year. My message to the players, who are my friends, is that here is the best chance you are going to get to show the world it was not about money.”

Brits is also adamant the Saracens “family” will not be torn apart by the current problems and said: “There is always a bigger picture at Saracens and it is never just about rugby. It is also about how they look after their players and even if they let guys go they will make sure there is some other option.

“In 2009 there was the Black Monday when they got rid of a big portion of the squad but they tried to put those people in a position where they had another option and Saracens will never leave a player out on the street.

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“Even if Saracens go down – so what? It is the people that make a club and they will bounce back from this. The aim at Saracens wasn’t to win things, it was to make memories together and winning is a product of that.

“One thing is certain: at some point, you will have to stop playing rugby and Saracens is a club that thinks about the person and that is why I speak so highly of them.

“The guys they have in the squad means it has a great character and the beauty of the club is everyone will be taken care of from a future perspective. That is how they looked after me and when I joined I was asked what was my plan after rugby and worked with me on this.

“This is a club that brought in three days of training and said on one of the other days you either spend it with your family or get work experience to expand your next career. I worked in London because the club was concerned about my next career which starts here in South Africa on Monday.”

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J
JW 3 hours 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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