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French club in bid to prise Danny Care from Harlequins
By Neil Fissler
Bayonne are making a last-minute attempt to derail Harlequins bid to keep veteran England scrum-half Danny Care at the Twickenham Stoop for another season.
RugbyPass understands that Care, who won his 97th England cap against Italy at the weekend, is close to agreeing to another one-year contract with Quins, who are second in the Premiership table.
Care, who celebrated his 37th birthday last month, is keen to continue playing for at least another season and is on course to join an elite club of England test centurions against Ireland at Twickenham on March 9th.
And it would see Care, who has won three Six Nations Championships, join Jason Leonard, Ben Youngs, Owen Farrell, Courtney Lawes and Dan Cole in playing 100 games for the Red Rose.
Leeds-born Care turned to rugby after being released by Sheffield Wednesday’s academy and moved to Quins in 2006, helping them win a European Challenge Cup in 2011 and two Premiership crowns.
The Quins stalwart broke the club’s all-time appearance record last February when he made his 351st appearance and is lending towards remaining at the club with his family settled in Surrey.
But Bayonne’s interest is serious as they are looking to replace another veteran, Maxime Machenaud, and they want an international standard player to replace the former Les Bleus ace.
Bayonne have been busy in the transfer market for next season and have already raided the Premiership for Mateo Carreras from Newcastle and Northampton Saints lock Alex Moon.
They can make Care a financially attractive offer to make him weigh up his future carefully and throw a spanner in Quins plans to keep him, forcing a quick rethink of their recruitment strategy.
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Latest Comments
After a fairly simple Pac4, the BFs will find out a lot about themselves in September when they face the rampaging RedRoses at Twickenham in front of a record crowd. After that they will face them again in Canada in WXV1. They also have France to contend with. Will be interesting to see what Australia have to offer with Jo Yapp at the helm.
Go to commentsSuper Rugby Pacific has been better as a spectacle due to the emphasis on speeding the game up and I’d look at taking things a step further. Instead of giving teams 90 seconds to take a conversion, let’s bring that down 60 seconds. You could also look at allowing 45 seconds for a penalty goal. Maybe teams could get 20 seconds instead of 30 to form a scrum before the ref then starts the engagement process. However, this year the most pleasing change is the added competitiveness in the Trans Tasman matches. What does frustrate me is how the rugby media in Australasia allow the the whole ‘‘rugby is boring’’/’’rugby yawnion’’ narrative to take hold from from vindictive league types, the chairman of the ARL commission and News Limited Australia. Stick up for the game and shift the narrative!
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