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Sale Sharks' pursuit of Nakarawa intensifies as lock's career at Racing in tatters

Leone Nakawara

Sale Sharks will this week step up their bid to sign Fijian lock Leone Nakarawa, the former European Player of the Year, who is currently in dispute with Racing 92 to solve a secondrow crisis at the Gallagher Premiership outfit.

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Sale’s need for extra secondrow options has become acute following Jean-Luc du Preez’s sending off for use of the shoulder to the head of an opponent in the 20-13 loss to Worcester and he could be out for six weeks. Steve Diamond, the Sale director of rugby, told RugbyPass: “Our immediate thought process is to get Nakawara in.”

Diamond is already operating without World Cup-winning Springbok lock Lood de Jager who is not expected to join the club until the spring after undergoing shoulder surgery for an injury suffered as South Africa beat England in the final in Yokohama. Josh Beaumont, the former Sale captain, is recovering knee reconstruction surgery and is out for an extended period further depleting the secondrow options.

As a result, Jean-Luc’s twin brother Dan will be asked to play lock rather than No6 in the Heineken Champions Cup clash with Exeter at the AJ Bell Stadium on Sunday with the teams meeting against a Sandy Park a week later.

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Nakarawa is currently back in Fiji having made a short return to France where it is understood he was told his career at Racing 92 was all but over following an extended absence after helping Fiji in the Rugby World Cup. Nakarawa, a former Fijian army officer, is currently overseeing the construction of a new family home in Waila and negotiations with Sale on on-going.

Diamond is keenly aware of the need to bolster his pack and added: “Dan du Preez will go into lock against Exeter and we will have James Phillips and the situation with Nakawara is that he has to be given a two weeks grace under French regulations and if we can get him then we will.

“Initially it would be a case of getting him in with the view of signing a longer-term deal. We are not going to panic about the current secondrow situation and we could say that we lost against Worcester because of the red card and, in hindsight, we probably did. Equally, there were areas of the game where we did deal with things as well as we could, but we lost four line outs late in the game. That is suicide.

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“We are the most disciplined team in the Premiership and we have to look at the offences we gave away. We fully respected Worcester and knew they were a good side and had to be at our best to beat them. We scored a great interception try from Faf de Klerk which is something we had worked on all week, but down to 14 men in the second half, Faf had to operate in a different position in the defence.”

WATCH: The Season 5 – Episode 4

A must-win fixture against neighbouring Tauranga Boys High School puts the team’s success in the firing line.

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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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