Sale add to South African contingent, beating Saracens to sign Cobus Wiese
Sale Sharks have raided South Africa for another highly-rated forward, signing Cobus Wiese from the Stormers after he opted out of joining Saracens following their automatic relegation from the Gallagher Premiership for breaching salary cap rules.
The 22-year-old, who can play lock or flanker, will join fellow South Africans Jono Ross, Faf de Klerk, Lood de Jager, Rohan Janse van Rensburg, Akker van der Merwe, Coenie Oosthuizen and Rob, Dan and Jean-Luc du Preez at the Manchester club.
Wiese has benefitted from the implementation by South African rugby of an immediate escape clause in his Stormers contract in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, with the termination window running from April 24 until May 14.
Steve Diamond’s Sale has become a home away from home for a large contingent of South African players, their form helping to propel the club into second place in the Gallagher Premiership and into the Premiership Cup final before the season was indefinitely suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic.
World Cup winner Faf de Klerk is proud of how all the South Africans have bedded in at Sale, telling RugbyPass: “It’s nearly three years since I arrived here and it’s a new country and you need to get used to things.
“I had good guys to make sure I was coping with things, and myself and Jono (the captain) have tried to do that for the South African guys coming in.
“We needed to make sure of that because we are such a large South African group. We didn’t speak Afrikaans all the time and didn’t make people feel shut out. We have had enough socials now. Everyone is getting along well and there is a lot of respect.”
. @Jono__Ross was on course for a third successive season of making more than 300 tackles in the Premiership @SaleSharksRugby before the pandemic hit.
Now he's using an alternative approach to contact training, as @chrisjonespress found out ??? https://t.co/ZBEpotT466
— RugbyPass (@RugbyPass) May 9, 2020
While disappointed to have lost Wiese to English rugby, Stormers coach John Dobson will be delighted to have kept Pieter-Steph du Toit, the World Rugby player of the year, amid fears that South Africa could become like Fiji with all its best players operating outside the country.
“My concern is that if this clause was to carry to its potential worst side that we could become like a Fiji with the majority of our professional players overseas,” he said in an interview with iol.co.za.
“Whether you have got an investor or a very generous sponsor to come and pick on those players, clubs that come and pick on those players think, ‘Oh, South Africa has got really bad Covid, the rand’s gone to rubbish, they have downed their salaries by about 40 per cent and we have got a very generous investor who wants to go help himself to the world player of the year’. To me, that’s against the spirit of what we need to be in this period.”
Comments on RugbyPass
We’re building a bridge but can't agree where the river is.
2 Go to commentsfirst no arms shoulder or helmet tackle into his rib cage is going to be so very painful even to watch. go back to RU mate.
1 Go to commentsBulls by 5. Plus another 50.
3 Go to commentsJohan Goosen avatar. Cute. Surely someone at RP knows how to do a google image search?
3 Go to commentsCan’t these games play a little earlier? Asking for a friend.
3 Go to commentsIt’s impressive that we can see huge stadiums with attendance in the 40 000 to 50 000 region. It shows how popular this competition is becoming. What is even more impressive is the massive growth in broadcast viewership. The URC is one of the two best leagues in the World, the other being the Top14.
7 Go to commentsChristie is not Sottish, like the majority of the Scotland team.
2 Go to commentsHold the phone, decline over-rated. Is it a one game, dead cat bounce or the real thing? Has the Penney dropped? Stay tuned.
45 Go to commentsTotally deserved win for the Crusaders Far smarter than the Chiefs who seem to be avoiding the basics when it matters Hotham showed them what was missing and Hannah seems a real find - a tad light but that can be fixed over time
8 Go to commentsGreat insight into the performance culture with Sarries and I predict Christie will be a fixture in the Scotland team now for some time to come. However, he is slightly missing his own point around Scotland “being soft” when he cites physicality examples in defence of that slight. The issue is much closer to the example he referenced around feeling off before a game but being told “it doesn’t matter, you can still play well” by Farrell. Until Scotland can get their psyche in that square, they will carry on folding under extreme pressure…
2 Go to comments> We are having to adapt, evolve and innovate more than when we were in Super Rugby where there was only really one style that everybody had to play to gain the most success. Have = able to? Interesting what that one style might be? I thought SA sides still had bad tours now, or at least bad schedule, months away? Those extra few hours flights have to be a killer though, no surprise to see their sides doing so badly at the start of the season each year. I wouldn’t enjoy that unfairness as a supporter.
7 Go to commentsThe problem for NZ, and Aus, is they ripped up the SR model and lost a massive chunk of revenue that hasn’t been replaced. Don’t forget SA clubs went North because they were left with no choice, Argy unceremoniously binned and Japan cast adrift. Now SR wasn’t perfect, far from it, but they’ve jumped into something without an effective plan, so far, to replace what they’ve lost. The biggest revenue potential now lies in Japan but it won’t be easy or quick to unlock, they are incredibly insular in culture as a nation. In the meantime, there is a serious time bomb sitting under SH rugby and if it happens then the current financial challenges will look like a picnic. IF the Boks follow their provincial teams and head north then it’s revenue meltdown. Not guaranteed to happen but the status quo is a very odd hybrid, with the Boks pointing one way and the clubs pointing the other way. And for as long as that remains then the threat is real.
45 Go to commentsI think Etene has had some good tuition, likely while at the Warriors to be a professional that helped his rugby jump, but he was certainly thrown in the deep end way too early. Should have arguably 20 less SR caps, and therefor a way better record that he does at his age, but his development would have been fast tracked by the need to satiate his signing away from league. Again, credit to him and others that he has done it so well. Easy to fall over under that pressure in the big leagues like that but he kept at it when I myself wasn’t sure he was good enough.
1 Go to commentsAwesome story. I wonder what a bigger American (SA) scene might have mean for Brex.
1 Go to comments“Johnny McNicholl and the Crusaders” save a Penney. Who has been in camp this week and showed them how to play?
8 Go to commentsSo, reports of the Crusaders’ demise / terminal decline are perhaps just - slightly - premature/exaggerated…? 🤔 Will we see a deep-dive into that by the estimable Rugbypass scribes, and maybe one or two mea culpas? Thought not.
8 Go to comments1. The Chiefs are rudderless without DMac, which enhances his AB chances 2. Chiefs pack are powderpuffs. The hard men arent there anymore 3. They had their golden title chance last yr and wont threaten this yr. Gone in second round of playoffs.
8 Go to commentsHonestly, why did you have to publish such a foolish article the day they play us? 😂
45 Go to comments> They are not standalone entities. They are linked to an amateur association which holds the FFR licence that allows the professional side to compete in the league. That’s a great rule. This looks like the chicken or egg professional scenario. How long is it going to be before the club can break even (if that is even a thing in French rugby)? If the locals aren’t into well it would be good to se them drop to amateur level (is it that far?). Hope they can reset from this level and be more practical, there will be a time when they can rebuild (if France has there setup right).
1 Go to commentsWhat about changing the ball? To something heavier and more pointed that bounces unpredictably. Not this almost round football used these days.
35 Go to comments