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Bath sign American football's Alex Gray
By Online Editors
Bath have delved into the American football market to bolster their midfield for the 2020/21 season, signing Atlanta Falcons tight-end Alex Gray, the ex-England 7s rugby player who previously featured for Yorkshire Carnegie, London Irish and Newcastle.
The 29-year-old had called time on his rugby career to see could he make it as an American footballer in the NFL. Now, after three years in the Falcons practice squad, he has returned to England to give rugby a second go.
It was 2016 when Gray put his rugby career on hold to chase his NFL dream. After progressing through the NFL's international player pathway programme in Florida, he was snapped up by Atlanta and has been part of their practice squad since then.
Standing at 6ft 4ins and weighing 113kgs, Bath are hoping Gray will bring "an exciting point of difference after being carefully selected through a rigorous recruitment process".
Explaining why he chased down Gray's signature, Bath boss Stuart Hooper told the club website: “Alex is a confident and very talented rugby player who brings in a lot of experience to the group.
"He is an adventurous individual that has done a lot of great things in this sport as well as striving to earn a career in the NFL in his most recent professional outing. We have been keeping tabs on Alex for a long time now and when the opportunity arose to sign him, we couldn’t pass on that.
"He will join up with a talented group of players with calibre for their attacking style of play. I'm confident that he will fit seamlessly into the group here at Bath and we look forward to seeing how he develops his game.”
Bath have form for trying to integrate players from other sports into their squad, signing Sam Burgess from rugby league in Australia in 2014.
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Agree, the team isn't really in transition anymore, that happened very early, and looks to have been completed by the Argentina loss, that they fixed the cause of that Foster type result and it didn't happen again.
Disagree with how you want to lock in the team like this. As Cantab suggests the real way this team is going to move forward now is by maximising the talent, and there are plenty of other ways the forward pack could potential be improved, so it is going to need some creative and ingenuitive coaching if ABs are going to prove good enough anymore.
Go to commentsBecause Robertson is allergic to risk-taking. Perofeta and Plummer were never once trialled at First Five-Eight, Beauden was kept at Fullback for like half the season despite having close to ten players over the year who can play that position.
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