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Fatialofa fund-raising campaign launched following his move to specialist spinal injury clinic
By Online Editors
Worcester Warriors have thrown their support behind a campaign to raise funds for injured lock Michael Fatialofa, who has now been moved to a specialist spinal injuries clinic at the Royal Buckinghamshire Hospital in Aylesbury.
The New Zealander suffered a serious neck injury within a minute of coming on as a replacement in the Gallagher Premiership match against Saracens at Allianz Park on January 4.
After four weeks in St Mary’s Hospital in London – three in intensive care – his injuries leave him facing damaged function, feeling and control over his body and a long period of rehabilitation and recovery.
A fundraising campaign has now been set up by the Rugby Players’ Association’s Restart charity to provide for his immediate needs, future costs and unforeseen expenses.
“Since Michael suffered his injury there have been so many offers of support from across the rugby community,” said Warriors’ co-owner Colin Goldring on the club’s website.
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“We have been working closely with Michael and Tatiana (his wife), the RPA and their Restart initiative, the RFU Injured Players Foundation, Pacific Rugby Players, New Zealand Rugby Foundation, the New Zealand Rugby Players Association and Esportif, Michael’s management company, to produce a coordinated plan to provide Michael with the best possible support.
“As an established charity which already provides support for seriously injured professional players, Restart was best-placed to provide co-ordinated support for Michael in the short, medium and long-term.
“Warriors are fully supportive of the campaign that has been launched and we would like supporters who want to support Michael and his family to donate to the JustGiving page.
“Warriors are continuing to employ Michael and have also covered the costs of a private hospital to ensure that he has the best possible care and as a starting donation to the fund-raising. Discussions about major fundraising events are continuing and we hope to announce further details in the near future.”
Donations to support Fatialofa can be made at justgiving.com/campaign/michaelfatialofa.
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Stephen Larkham, Mick Byrne, Scott Wisental, Ben Mowen, Les Kiss, Jim McKay, Rod Kafer.
There are plenty of great Australian coaches who could do a better job than Schmidt.
Go to commentsThis piece is nothing more than the result of revisionist fancy of Northern Hemisphere rugby fans. Seeing what they want to see, helped but some surprisingly good results and a desire to get excited about doing something well.
I went back through the 6N highlights and sure enough in every English win I remembered seeing these exact holes on the inside, that are supposedly the fallout out of a Felix Jones system breaking down in the hands of some replacement. Every time the commentators mentioned England being targeted up the seam/around the ruck or whatever. Each game had a try scored on the inside of the blitz, no doubt it was a theme throughout all of their games. Will Jordan specifically says that Holland had design that move to target space he saw during their home series win.
Well I'm here to tell you they were the same holes in a Felix Jones system being built as well. This woe is now sentiment has got to stop. The game is on a high, these games have been fantastic! It is Englands attack that has seen their stocks increase this year, and no doubt that is what SB told him was the teams priority. Or it's simply science, with Englands elite players having worked towards a new player welfare and management system, as part of new partnership with the ERU, that's dictating what the players can and can't put their bodies through.
The only bit of truth in this article is that Felix is not there to work on fixing his defence. England threw away another good chance of winning in the weekend when they froze all enterprise under pressure when no longer playing attacking footy for the second half. That mindset helped (or not helped if you like) of course by all this knee jerk, red brained criticism.
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