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Teddy Thomas' belated Racing 92 exit reported in France


Teddy Thomas /Getty Images
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Reports in the South of France suggest that Teddy Thomas will leave Racing 92 at the end of the current season to sign with Ronan O’Gara’s La Rochelle.

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Rumours that the France international wanted out of Paris started last season, with reports linking him to a move to Toulouse back in February, but it seems the yellow and blacks on the west coast have won the race to sign the try scoring phenom.

The previous Toulouse deal had also been forecast as a ‘done deal’ until an apparent last-minute change of heart on the part of Thomas and Racing. Headlines at the time claimed that the capital side did not wish to renew his contract. “According to our information, Racing has decided not to renew the contract of its international winger Teddy Thomas which expires next June,” L’Equipe reported the time.

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Nevertheless, according to information from Sud Ouest, Thomas is set to join La Rochelle on a three-year deal. It will bring to an end an eight-year stint at the Parisian side.

The 28-year-old started his professional career at Biarritz before transferring to Jacky Lorenzetti’s resurgent Racing in 2012. The versatile back has now been capped 28-times by France and is one of Fabien Galthié’s major attacking weapons in this year’s Guinness Six Nations.

What is behind the parting of the proven try scorer and the club where he made his career remains unclear. It’s quite the coup for Les Maritimes, who signed fellow France centre Jonathan Danty from Racing over the summer.

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Red and White Dynamight 2 hours ago
'Bit unfair': Bulls boss Johan Ackermann's vow before All Blacks clash

“kicked out”. Safas clutch so desperately to their string of victim pearls that excuses are always at the ready to explain away their own poor management decisions. SARU threatened their SANZAR partners for years that ‘because of viewership numbers’ that they were owed a bigger slice of the broadcasting rights pie. Aus and NZ quite rightly told them to FO, SANZAR was an equal partnership. Notwithstanding that each partner brought their own strengths and weaknesses, certainly a winning record completely escaped SA teams as part of their ‘package’. OFS were chopped, and early, despite being 1 of the more attractive SA teams to watch. Still the concentration of SA players from 5 teams to 4 had little discernible improvement on teams performance. In fact, SA teams were - by far - the least successful partner. Only 1 Champion SA club whereas all 3 origin Aus teams won and all 5 NZ teams have won. SA teams had a 22% win rate in NZ - so noone was turning up to watch them - whilst NZ teams had a 50% win rate in SA. When Covid pandemic hit the entire World and, NZ for 1 closed borders in and out, obviously this impacted an International competition and whilst a trans-Tasman lite-Super comp returned eventually, SARU used this opportunity to scream “we’ve been kicked out”. The reality was a temporary solution that would have soon corrected itself. Of course everyone knows the Safas innately clutch desperately to being a victim - ‘noone likes us, we dont care’ - and everyone outside of SA knows that the truth is found elsewhere. After only a few seasons of turning up to matches with teams full of development players in the URC/Champions Cup, those partner nations and their fans are already sick of the moaning and whinging that inherently accompanies all things Sth African. SARU are probably still kidding themselves that they will enter the 6Nations and that they will be “kicked out” of the Rugby Championship. What a bunch of big babies.

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