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Sarries go nine from nine

Jamie George scores a try against Wasps.

England pair Jamie George and Nick Isiekwe scored second-half tries as Saracens made it nine wins from nine and moved to the top of the Premiership table with a 29-6 victory over Wasps.

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Exeter Chiefs suffered their first loss of the season on Friday and Sarries took full advantage the following day with a hard-fought success at Allianz Park.

Saracens were leading 12-6 in the 59th minute when hooker George, who scored a hat-trick of tries against Wasps last season, proved their nemesis again when fed by Brad Barritt as constant pressure from the home side finally told.

Isiekwe then capitalised on Elliot Daly’s loose pass to add another score as the defending champions preserved the only remaining unbeaten record in the league.

Kyle Eastmond’s red card proved costly for Leicester Tigers as Bristol Bears scored 20 unanswered second-half points to claim a 41-10 victory – just their third in the Premiership this season.

Eastmond was dismissed for a high tackle in the 24th minute when his shoulder smashed into Ian Madigan’s head.

At that stage the Bears were only three points ahead – Harry Thacker and Manu Tuilagi crossing at either end – but Thacker dotted down again before the break, and Luke Morahan and Harry Randall scored tries early in the second half to give Bristol a bonus-point win.

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Newcastle Falcons moved off the foot of the table with a dramatic 16-14 win over Northampton Saints as Toby Flood added the extras to Mark Wilson’s try in the 88th minute.

Despite leading 6-0 through two Flood penalties, Newcastle appeared on course for a defeat when Cobus Reinach went in either side of the interval for Northampton.

Yet the TMO awarded Wilson a dramatic late try and Flood kept his nerve to deliver the victory with the subsequent conversion.

Gloucester moved up to third as they ran in six tries in a 36-16 victory over Worcester Warriors.

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Ollie Thorley provided two of those scores, with James Hanson, Charlie Sharples, Freddie Clarke and Jaco Visagie the others to dot down.

Duncan Weir converted three first-half penalties for the Warriors but Gloucester were already home and hosed by the time Bryce Heem provided a consolation try for Worcester.

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AllyOz 1 day ago
Does the next Wallabies coach have to be an Australian?

I will preface this comment by saying that I hope Joe Schmidt continues for as long as he can as I think he has done a tremendous job to date. He has, in some ways, made the job a little harder for himself by initially relying on domestic based players and never really going over the top with OS based players even when he relaxed his policy a little more. I really enjoy how the team are playing at the moment.


I think Les Kiss, because (1) he has a bit more international experience, (2) has previously coached with Schmidt and in the same setup as Schmidt, might provide the smoothest transition, though I am not sure that this necessarily needs to be the case.


I would say one thing though about OS versus local coaches. I have a preference for local coaches but not for the reason that people might suppose (certainly not for the reason OJohn will have opined - I haven't read all the way down but I think I can guess it).


Australia has produced coaches of international standing who have won World Cups and major trophies. Bob Dwyer, Rod Macqueen, Alan Jones, Michael Cheika and Eddie Jones. I would add John Connolly - though he never got the international success he was highly successful with Queensland against quality NZ opposition and I think you could argue, never really got the run at international level that others did (OJohn might agree with that bit). Some of those are controversial but they all achieved high level results. You can add to that a number of assistants who worked OS at a high level.


But what the lack of a clear Australian coach suggests to me is that we are no longer producing coaches of international quality through our systems. We have had some overseas based coaches in our system like Thorn and Wessels and Cron (though I would suggest Thorn was a unique case who played for Australia in one code and NZ in the other and saw himself as a both a NZer and a Queenslander having arrived here at around age 12). Cron was developed in the Australian system anyway, so I don't have a problem with where he was born.


But my point is that we used to have systems in Australia that produced world class coaches. The systems developed by Dick Marks, which adopted and adapted some of the best coaching training approaches at the time from around the world (Wales particularly) but focussed on training Australian coaches with the best available methods, in my mind (as someone who grew up and began coaching late in that era) was a key part of what produced the highly skilled players that we produced at the time and also that produced those world class coaches. I think it was slipping already by the time I did my Level II certificate in 2002 and I think Eddie Jones influence and the priorities of the executive, particularly John O'Neill, might have been the beginning of the end. But if we have good coaching development programmes at school and junior level that will feed through to representative level then we will have


I think this is the missing ingredient that both ourselves and, ironically, Wales (who gave us the bones of our coaching system that became world leading), is a poor coaching development system. Fix that and you start getting players developing basic skills better and earlier in their careers and this feeds through all the way through the system and it also means that, when coaching positions at all levels come up, there are people of quality to fill them, who feed through the system all the way to the top. We could be exporting more coaches to Japan and England and France and the UK and the USA, as we have done a bit in the past.


A lack of a third tier between SR and Club rugby might block this a little - but I am not sure that this alone is the reason - it does give people some opportunity though to be noticed and play a key role in developing that next generation of players coming through. And we have never been able to make the cost sustainable.


I don't think it matters that we have an OS coach as our head coach at the moment but I think it does tell us something about overall rugby ecosystem that, when a coaching appointment comes up, we don't have 3 or 4 high quality options ready to take over. The failure of our coaching development pathway is a key missing ingredient for me and one of the reasons our systems are failing.

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