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Andy Goode and Brendan Venter get into a heated debate over Saracens
By Rugby Pod
This week's episode of The Rugby Pod was intriguing as former Saracens coach Brendan Venter called in to talk about his old team's automatic relegation from the Premiership.
Rugby Pod host Andy Goode and South African Venter had exchanged some heated tweets in recent days in relation to Saracens being relegated from the top tier of English rugby.
The two men clashed on whether the Londoners were a dishonest club regarding the salary cap scandal that has enveloped them, or whether they were simply unaware of how bad their finances were.
Goode invited Venter to feature on the show after they had their disagreement online and Venter kept to his word, featuring on the podcast which was released early on Tuesday morning.
The ex-South Africa international claimed he has had a look at Saracens numbers and that the club was not far off making the salary cap limit that was needed to keep them in the Premiership.
"The amount involved is actually much smaller than the £2 million thrown around. I asked them about eight weeks ago what are we over? When the thing broke, I was like, this is not ideal, how much are we over? And nobody could tell me, nobody knew," claimed Venter.
Goode, in contrast, asserted that it was far easier for players at Saracens to buy into the culture at the club when they very financially well off. Venter admitted it was former chairman Nigel Wray's kindness that led the club to be in the state that it was in.
"Every time that a player needed to be kept, the player would go to Nigel personally and Nigel would broker a deal with him. And Nigel would always broker a deal around the joint investments thing."
WATCH: Andy Goode and Brendan Venter didn’t hold back on this week’s The Rugby Pod as they discussed Saracens and the salary cap scandal
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I guess the other option would be to start ALB, he's looked good in the 12 so far when he starts and sets up those outside him. But that would mean putting the vice captain on the bench, which is unlikely. Another option would be to drop Reiko to the bench and play Proctor, though he's gone home so that's not going to happen either.
Both of those players just offer more of the soft distribution skills good centres learn from playing their careers there. Unfortunately that's what's lacking with the current combo.
Go to commentsWhatever let's see if this load of waffle is still valid in 2 years time. ABs will rise we have a lot of new talent coming through. The NPC was the highest standard for years. The game is changing to suit the fast pace we like to play. We get to play the Springboks more, including the franchises, which will make us better! Overall I am optimistic. I will add having watched the England game multiple times we made most of the play. England are an awesome physical team, but you can expect the All Blacks to get better and better at executing the chances. It could easily have been 5 tries to one instead of 3 to 1.
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