Saracens have reportedly opened talks with Fulham Football Club about a move to London to share the Premier League side’s ground – having spent the last 11 years sharing grounds with Watford.
www.rugby365.com
With 1995 World Cup-winning captain Francois Pienaar and team manager Morne du Plessis on the Saracens board – the club is looking to tap into a market that includes an estimated 750,000 expatriate South Africans living in and around South-West London
Last season’s Heineken Cup semifinalists thus believe a move to Craven Cottage would enable them to double average crowds to 15,000, considering Saracens’ growing South African fan base.
Apart from the South African influence on the board, Sarries have former Wallaby coach Eddie Jones at the helm – who acted as technical advisor to Jake White’s World Cup winning Springboks in 2007.
Saracens also have a number of high-profile South African players in their squad, namely Wikus van Heerden, Bradley Barritt, Neil de Kock and Cobus Visagie.
The likely timing of a move is for the start of the 2010-11 season however, as Sarries’ lease at Vicarage Road still has 18 months to run.
With London Irish playing in Reading and London Wasps having moved to High Wycombe, Saracens clearly hope to exploit the desire to watch top-flight rugby in the capital.
“Whether we like it or not, rugby will go the same way as soccer,” Nigel Wray, the man responsible for transforming Saracens into a venerable Premiership club, told The Telegraph.
“That means you will need substantial resources to play at the top table and if you are not at the top table, you are probably nowhere.”
Providing they gain approval from the South African Rugby Union, reports even suggest that plans are being drawn up by Saracens for deals to sign Springboks Schalk Burger and Bryan Habana on loan – which should certainly provide even more of a spectacle for local South African expats.
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May as well change the name to Saffricans.
Craven Cottage is a dump though. Why not share Loftus Road? (QPR’s ground) Smaller but much neater and better. London Irish used to share with them a few years back
what’s wrong with Sevenoaks? Thousands of Saffas here. Now we just need a stadium
Wont all this Saffa influence cause a bit of a stink amongst the local players?If im not mistaken London Irish had that uprising a while back.
Lonely, im so lonely ….
Rugby and romance novels don’t seem the closest of bedfellows.
But Britain’s Rugby Football Union (RFU) is looking to seduce new fans by teaming up with famous publisher Mills and Boon for a series of eight steamy touchline tales to hit the shelves next month.
😯 😐
@PJLD (Comment 6) : good gracious!
Harlequins play at The Stoop and get 10 000 or so. They play up the road at Twickenham and get massive crowds. It seems the potential to grow is there. Agree with Willie, QPR is a lovely ground, placed strategically in South Africa and Bloemfontein Roads if not mistaken. Wikus might like the name “Loftus Road”
@robdylan (Comment 7) : Jaaa .
@Baldrick (Comment 8) : scuse my ignorance, but which part of London is it in?
Wouls like to know how this ‘loan’ business is going to work. They already play almost year round. When will they have time to be ‘loaned’ to Saracens?
Doubt I’b be trekking over to Fulham. But if Burger & Habana turn out I just might make an effort.
Can’t wait for the Mills & Boon books either. 🙄
@McLovin (Comment 12) : fulham is closer for me than Watford is, anyway.
@robdylan (Comment 14) : certainly. me too. 15 miles as opposed to 57 miles.
@McLovin (Comment 15) : watford is closer to 100 from here.
@PJLD (Comment 6) : Oh my God.” Her hand covered her mouth. She glanced at him in desperate panic. “They filmed me kissing you. And it’s up on the giant screens.” Her voice rose, her cheeks were scarlet, and her reluctant glance towards the stadium ended in a moan of disbelief. “Oh God, I can’t believe this … and my hair is all over the place and my bottom looks huge, and – everyone is looking.”
His eyes on the pitch, Prince Casper watched with cool detachment as his friend, the England captain, hit a post with a drop-goal attempt. “More importantly, you just cost England three points.”
@PJLD (Comment 6) : The RFU International Billionaires series launches with The Prince’s Waitress Wife – in which one sex scene takes place in the president’s suite at Twickenham – on 1 February, just before the start of the RBS Six Nations Championships.
In a later title, The Ruthless Billionaire’s Virgin, the heroine stands in to sing the national anthem, only to suffer a “wardrobe malfunction” from which she is saved by the chivalrous hero.
Can’t wait. 🙄
@McLovin (Comment 18) : you’re making this stuff up?
@robdylan (Comment 19) : Unfortunately not. It’s real and it’s coming. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
@robdylan (Comment 10) : Shepards Bush.
(Inter city into London Waterloo and then take the London Underground JUBILEE line, NORTHBOUND, to BOND street, where you change and take the CENTRAL line, WESTBOUND, to WHITE CITY, which is 7 stops. Get off at White City, Cross over WOOD Lane and walkdown South Africa Road. Loftus Road is on the left!)
I went to see Saracens play in about 1995. Are they still near Cockfosters?
@Baldrick (Comment 21) : I think so, yes.
You seem to know London rather well
@McLovin (Comment 20) : Noooo
@PJLD (Comment 23) : Other titles in the series are: The French Tycoon’s Pregnant Mistress, At The Argentinian Billionaire’s Bidding, The Ruthless Billionaire’s Virgin, The Italian Count’s Defiant Bride, Blackmailed into the Greek Tycoon’s Bed, The Virgin Secretary’s Impossible Boss and The Sheik’s Lovechild.
@PJLD (Comment 23) : that’s vomit-inducing stuff, that
Here’s some more Mills & Boon.
A bit risky. If too risky apologies. Thought it was funny.
We met in a secluded field,
the
sun nearly kissing the evening horizon. The warm breeze was full of
that
earthy, musky scent that only those fortunate enough to live outside
the urban rat race know, and a quiet whispering of leaves in the
weeping willow overhead added the final touch to the most romantic
scene. We lay there, both naked. I knew I had to have her, and have
her now. Without a word being spoken, I moved to a position of
dominance. I could feel instantly that this was what she was waiting
for as she frantically thrust her pelvis at my approaching organ.
I moved slowly at first, inch by inch, until I was fully inside her.
Then as the tension rose, we threw caution to the wind and
abandoned ourselves to the moment. Although inexperienced, she
approached every change of position with enthusiasm, moaning with
despair every time I withdrew to prevent myself ending it all too
soon.
As the sexual tension heightened towards the inevitable mind blowing
climax, it was all I could do to hold out any longer. Finally,
the moment we had been building up to was upon us, and passed all
too
quickly. Breathlessly we rolled together in the now damp grass. As
the last deep orange glow of the long setting sun melted into the
darkness of approaching night, we lay there still entwined in an
amorous
embrace. I kissed her long and lovingly, and whispered
reassuringly how good she had been. She tenderly and
sensuously licked my inner ear and whispered, ‘Baaaaaaa’ and
rejoined
the flock.
This book is only for sale in New Zealand &
Australia
England rugby player Mike Tindall has been banned for three years for drink driving.
he was pulled over by police on the M4 near Newbury, Berkshire, in March last year.
He had spent the previous day at the races in Cheltenham with long-term partner Zara Phillips, the Queen’s granddaughter.
Tindall was arrested and charged after recording a level of 91mg of alcohol in 100ml of blood in a breath test. The legal limit is 80mg.
The court was told that Tindall said he had drunk a Budweiser, a bottle of Becks and a Carling followed by seven glasses of champagne in the evening.
He later went to a restaurant where he drank a further beer and a vodka and Red Bull, finishing drinking at around midnight.
Light weight. 😉
@McLovin (Comment 28) : oops… yet another royal scandal(ette)
@PJLD (Comment 6) : You’re shitting me! LOL
@McLovin (Comment 17) : Brilliant. One might think you had already written for Mills and Boon. 😉
@klempie (Comment 33) : That’s the real deal. You can’t make that shit up. 🙂
@McLovin (Comment 26) : 😆 😈