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'Massive concern' - Worcester waiting for news on Fatialofa neck injury

Michael Fatialofa is removed from the field in London in early January (Photo by Henry Browne/Getty Images)

Worcester boss Alan Solomons admitted his “massive concern” about the neck injury suffered by replacement Michael Fatialofa in the 62-5 Gallagher Premiership defeat at Saracens.

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Fatialofa, a 27-year-old second row from Auckland, had been on the pitch for just over a minute when he was hurt while taking the ball into contact.

Play was held up for almost 10 minutes as he received medical attention and, having been carried from the pitch on a stretcher, he was taken by ambulance to St Mary’s hospital accompanied by the team doctor and a travelling reserve.

“For me, a neck injury like that is a massive concern and I am worried about it, but I haven’t had any report from the hospital,” Solomons said.

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“It seemed like he dropped his head as he went into contact, but I haven’t studied the footage. It seems like he’s taken a blow to the neck.

“The medics have taken all precautions and have done everything possible. We’ve contacted his partner to let her know.”

Saracens director of rugby Mark McCall added: “Our thoughts are with Michael Fatialofa. It didn’t look great. His health is the most important thing.”

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Solomons refused to criticise his players as they conceded 10 tries in a brutally one-sided clash at Allianz Park that saw Saracens secure the bonus point on the half-hour mark.

The South African felt Worcester were on the receiving end of a backlash after the champions, who have been docked 35 points for being in breach of salary cap regulations, had lost 14-7 at arch-rivals Exeter six days ago.

“We were comprehensively outplayed by a side that played magnificently. They were outstanding and simply too good on the day,” he said.

“We knew they weren’t at their best against Exeter last week and we knew there would be a backlash. We couldn’t stem their momentum.”

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McCall admitted the setback at Sandy Park had hurt the club as they continue their desperate battle against relegation.

“When we looked at the Exeter performance properly, it was really frustrating to see our lack of intensity at crucial points,” McCall said.

“We were outworked by Exeter so fair play to them for that, but it’s something we don’t want to happen.

“We want to play with intensity and properly work hard and as we saw here that gives you a lot of good things in rugby. We enjoyed it and we want to enjoy our rugby.

“We did that in the first 30 minutes and got a lot of rewards. The second half was very disjointed because of all the injuries.”

Press Association

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J
JW 33 minutes ago
Does South Africa have a future in European competition?

I rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.


He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.


The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).


The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.


The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).


It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.

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