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Newcastle make short-term signing just days before season start

Ethan Grayson of England looks on during Under 20's Six Nations match between Scotland U20 v England U20 at DAM Health Stadium on February 04, 2022 in Edinburgh, Scotland. (Photo by David Rogers/Getty Images)

Newcastle Falcons have signed former England U20 international Ethan Grayson on a short-term deal until the end of 2024.

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The former Northampton Saints flyhalf/centre, 22, spent the first half of the year in the United States with the San Diego Legion in Major League Rugby, and will return stateside at the end of the calendar year in preparation for the 2025 MLR season.

Grayson, son of former England and Northampton flyhalf Paul, made five appearances for the Saints, having come through their academy, before leaving in the summer of 2023. He enjoyed a short stint with the Bedford Blues in the Championship, who he was previously dual registered with, before moving to the MLR.

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The signing comes just days before the Falcons get their Gallagher Premiership season underway against Bristol Bears on Friday at Kingston Park.

The versatile back will link up with his former England U20 coach Alan Dickens in the northeast, who joined Steve Diamond’s coaching staff this summer.

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“I’m in between seasons with San Diego and the timing has worked out well, so I’ll be here until the new year and am really looking forward to it,” Grayson said.

“We got to the quarter-finals of Major League Rugby which finished in August and starts again in January, and during the interim I’ll be here in Newcastle trying to make a positive contribution.

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“I’m buzzing to be back in a Premiership environment, to be working with Alan Dickens again and buying into the vision that Dimes has for the club.

“I’d like to think I’m a distributor who can play across 10, 12 and 13, and bring a bit of a kicking game. I can run a short ball to the line as well with that element of physicality, and hopefully I can offer some variety.”

Diamond added: “Ethan is in between contracts with heading back to America in the new year, so it’s a window of opportunity for us to bring in a good young player for a few months.

“Our senior coach Alan Dickens knows him from their time together at Northampton Saints and England Under-20s, and he can do a job for us.

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“We’ve spoken on a number of occasions about running a smaller squad this season, and one thing that does do is give us the ability to act quickly when players become available and we have a spot for them to come in.”

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J
JW 45 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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