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Transfer twist as Mulipola to stay at Newcastle despite Grenoble unveiling him as new signing

Logovi'i Mulipola (Photo by Bob Bradford/CameraSport via Getty Images)

Logovi’i Mulipola will be staying at Newcastle Falcons the club have confirmed, despite French side Grenoble revealing him as a new signing last week.

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The Samoan tighthead has signed a two-year contract that will see him stay Tyneside until at least 2023.

The vastly-experienced Samoan international has made 41 appearances for the Falcons since joining from Leicester Tigers in the summer of 2018.

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Johnny Sexton on narrow Six Nations loss to Wales

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Johnny Sexton on narrow Six Nations loss to Wales

Director of rugby Dean Richards said: “Logo continues to perform at a consistently high standard, and it’s great news that he will be with us for another two seasons.

“His ability to play on either side of the front row is very useful, he has really helped anchor our scrum this season and he makes a nuisance of himself around the park.

“He’s a great character around the place who is very popular with team-mates and supporters alike, so it’s fantastic that he will be remaining in Newcastle to help our continued growth as a club.”

Last week Grenoble claimed to have signed the giant prop.

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It had been reported in France earlier this month that Mulipola had signed for the ProD2 side, reports that prompted Richards to refute the claims last week: “I spoke to him yesterday [Tuesday] and he said he hasn’t signed anywhere. You know as well as I do that boys put things out there and they try either to speculate or force people hands by saying they have signed or are going to sign. I never look at the speculation and always speak to the individual. That is how I deal with it.”

Capped 33 times by his country, including two Rugby World Cups, Mulipola has started all seven of the Falcons’ Gallagher Premiership games this season.

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J
JW 5 hours 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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