England-qualified Hoskins Sotutu seals PREM switch - report

I’m afraid Hoskins won’t cut it in the PREM as he & the PREM are not a good match. Newcastle are splashing the cash trying to build a team but it won’t work. And I hope Hoskins brings some thermals over as it’s get pretty cold up t’north…

Without the Razor agenda, this man would be in the All Blacks squad. Newcastle have signed themselves a quality player.

Be funny if he goes all the way there but then decides to play for Fiji. Such a wasted opportunity for the coaching staff to barely give him a look after his resurgence last year. He may have taken a while to get started in Super this year with injuries and suspension but he was back on form fairly quickly. It was visible in 2024 just how much more he was getting involved in the breakdown compared to previous years - in that Vern Cotter pack, you stick out like a sore thumb if you don’t. Instead they went with Ethan Blackadder who’d played 3 games all year to that point, and brought Sam Cane out of retirement.

He is clearly an outstanding No 8, and I think we should be happy he is coming. He has a bit more size than most of our already world class back row options so will be a great addition to the squad. And more depth, which is what we need if we want to compete with SA anytime soon!

And I would much rather have someone who qualifies for England through their mum that one who qualifies after living here for a few years! Don't care where they learned their rugby!

Christie is the much more high profile signing, performance/impact wise, is he eligible for England?

Hoskins will be playing for his province then, nothing to do with the Blues, it’s a separate comp entirely (part of the negativity towards the Super Rugby concept).

Hope someone (at RB) can engineer a good gameplan to make the most of his unique skills, you could see him being a menace in aussie rules bouncing the ball to himself and offloading, don’t expect even RB is big enough to get that added to PREM rugby though. Hope he manages a cap to represent one of his parents home as well, that would be very sweet.

I don’t care if he’s England qualified. He was born and raised in NZ and came through their development pathway. So should play for them. Besides which, England have Earl and CCS.

It was only a matter of time as to when this decision was going to be finalised …

Fare thee well Hoskin, see if you can improve your playing skills in the UK…

Based on ability and performance alone, Sotutu clearly has been one of the top two 8s since 2022, along with Savea, and deserved selection.

However, both the Foster coaching team and Razor’s team, choose not to select him.

So there is obviously something behind the scenes with Sotutu which is the cause of his non-selection.

Regardless, I wish Sotutu well and hope he goes on to have a great career for England against all opponents but All Blacks.

This would have been a big deal a few years ago… right now England have greater backrow depth than NZ so hard to see him getting near it.. aside from the obligatory “let's make sure he gets 1 cap off the bench just in case we ever want him.” .. that's not to say England's first choice backrow is necessarily better than NZ, we don't have Savea or Sititi but we've got a lot of excellent flankers and Borthwick seems to want a player like Earl/Pollock at 8.