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Former Scotland skipper Brown to retire
By Peter Thompson
Former Scotland captain Kelly Brown will finish his playing days at the end of the season and take up a role as Saracens' academy coach.
The 34-year-old back-row forward won 64 caps for his country and was skipper 14 times.
Brown has won three Premiership titles, the Champions Cup and Anglo-Welsh Cup since joining Sarries from Glasgow Warriors in 2010.
He could retire on a high note, with the London club in the last four of Europe's premier club competition and in the hunt to retain their Premiership title.
I've loved every minute, but it's time to hang up the boots. pic.twitter.com/F98Mxpv3Je
— Kelly Brown (@kellydrbrown) April 11, 2017
He said: "I always knew this day would come and it seems like only yesterday I was pulling on the black and yellow of Melrose as an 18-year old student.
"Since then I've been hugely fortunate to play the game I love at the highest level for the Border Reivers, Glasgow Warriors, Saracens and Scotland.
"Along the way, I've met some great people who I can now call friends for life. I have played for four clubs who I care deeply about and to have been able to captain my country is an honour that I'll always cherish."
He added: "I'm forever grateful to be ending my career at a fantastic club like Saracens. Their support for my family and me has been unstinting and I'm extremely excited to be moving into a new role within the club's academy next season.
"I've been lucky to have been able to live my dream for 13 years and now I'm privileged to be able to help others do the same."
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Latest Comments
Like I've said before about your idea (actually it might have been something to do with mine, I can't remember), I like that teams will a small sustainable league focus can gain the reward of more consistent CC involvement. I'd really like the most consistent option available.
Thing is, I think rugby can do better than footballs version. I think for instance I wanted everyone in it to think they can win it, where you're talking about the worst teams not giving up because they are so far off the pace we get really bad scoreline when that and giving up to concentrate on the league is happening together.
So I really like that you could have a way to remedy that, but personally I would want my model to not need that crutch. Some of this is the same problem that football has. I really like the landscape in both the URC and Prem, but Ireland with Leinster specifically, and France, are a problem IMO. In football this has turned CL pool stages in to simply cash cow fixtures for the also ran countries teams who just want to have a Real Madrid or ManC to lose to in their pool for that bumper revenue hit. It's always been a comp that had suffered for real interest until the knockouts as well (they might have changed it in recent years?).
You've got some great principles but I'm not sure it's going to deliver on that hard hitting impact right from the start without the best teams playing in it. I think you might need to think about the most minimal requirement/way/performance, a team needs to execute to stay in the Champions Cup as I was having some thougt about that earlier and had some theory I can't remember. First they could get entry by being a losing quarter finalist in the challenge, then putting all their eggs in the Champions pool play bucket in order to never finish last in their pool, all the while showing the same indifference to their league some show to EPCR rugby now, just to remain in champions. You extrapolate that out and is there ever likely to be more change to the champions cup that the bottom four sides rotate out each year for the 4 challenge teams? Are the leagues ever likely to have the sort of 'flux' required to see some variation? Even a good one like Englands.
I'd love to have a table at hand were you can see all the outcomes, and know how likely any of your top 12 teams are going break into Champions rubyg on th back it it are?
Go to commentsYou always get idiots who go overboard. What else is new? I ignore them. Why bother?
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