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Sale Sharks centre pleads guilty to assaulting police officer

Mark Jennings scores a try for Sale during a November 2017 English Premiership match (Photo by Matthew Lewis/Getty Images)

Sale’s Mark Jennings has had his English court case adjourned before sentencing until March 28 so that magistrates can consider medical reports on the state of the midfielder’s mental health.

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The 26-year-old pleaded guilty to a charge of assaulting a police officer and a charge of causing a public order offence by using threatening, abusive and insulting a police officer on February 2.

His club placed him on a long-term sabbatical three days later for the foreseeable future, with coach Steve Diamond saying: “’We wish him well in his recovery process.”

Jennings, who hasn’t played for Sale since an early October appearance against Newcastle and is out of contract this summer, was released on unconditional bail after his lawyer Mark Haslam – who claimed Jennings had been unwell and described the offences as a “very sad case” – asked Kin-Ming Cheng, the chair of magistrates, to review medical reports.

The chair of magistrates agreed to the request, but added that Jennings must make sure he attended the next hearing and warned him not to commit any further offences while on bail.

(Continue reading below…)

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The incident that warranted Jennings’ guilty plea unfolded last month when a 999 call was made to police after the player had allegedly smashed up his luxury home in a drunken rampage

Crown Prosecutor David Morgan said: “At 11pm officers were called to Mr Jennings’ home. He was taken into a separate room by the officer.

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“He made comments about the questioning police officers. He resisted being put into hand-cuffs. He head-butted a police officer in the chest. During the journey to the police station he told the officers that he was going to kill them and he told one police officer he was going to rape them.”

Namibian-born Jennings, who joined Sale on his 16th birthday and represented England under-20s, said in February after club agreed to his sabbatical: “I’d like to thank Sale for the opportunity and the understanding to allow me to fully recover away from the club and hopefully return once I’m fully fit.”

Jennings made his Sale debut in 2011/12 and has made 95 appearances. However, he has been injury-prone in recent times and the two-year deal he signed in March 2017 is due to expire at the end of this season.

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J
JW 29 minutes ago
New Zealanders may not understand, but in France Test rugby is the 'B movie'

But he was wrong, he had to take back what he said. But maybe this only happened because he came out and was honest with his initial plans?


He’s simply in a position where he should be far more professional.


I don’t really follow much media, especially SM, but again, I’ve not seen anyone complaining. Plenty of ridicule and pointing out things like it being disrespectful to the game, but as far as the English language goes, that’s not complaining. Nick Bishop for instance hasn’t been complaining, he’s simply saying Galthie made a bad decision for France’s prospects (which when the common reply is ‘thats how it is’).


Complaining would be views expressing that the FFR should have put the tour back a week so that all T14 finalists could attend. Complaining would be saying they’ve been robbed of seeing the worlds best stars. Complaining would be saying players can simply take extra weeks off from T14. I’ve only seen advice and suggestions that these are things France need to look-at-for-the-future.


Basically I tried to communicate with French fans because they don’t understand what’s being communicated. ALL reactions I have seen shared here by French supports have all seemed way over the top compared what I’ve seen expressed about this tour.

the players are expected to play in too many matches, for too many minutes, and need more rest and recovery time.

This is the message I have been sharing. So something needs to happen, whether thats France pull out of more Internationals or rest players from more domestic games, who knows, but I also don’t think what they have now is working. It’s obviously much better than 3-4 years ago, but they appear to want to work even harder at it like you say. Personally I’ve only seen LNR be reasonable, I hear much less of their other internationals being denied/influenced not to play, so I imagine that they will give even further (as I can’t really see France pulling out the other international windows as well).

147 Go to comments
J
JW 1 hour ago
'The Wallabies only have themselves to blame': How the Lions sunk Australia in Melbourne

Cameron Woki picked at the base of a ruck and jumped/dived over. That would clearly now be penalised.

But the Sheehan try is different to my eye. It starts from a tap penalty, he drives forward, the two WB defenders go low for a tackle in the assumption Sheehan will go to ground. He does not, but seeing the hole now left dives through it. In this case surely there is zero danger there.

World Rugby’s terminology/interpretation recently (shared again after this) is that it’s ok to hurdle/dive (that includes over, say a ruck, which we have seen this many times even in this years SR) to score a try, but it’s not (OK) to avoid a tackle. I can’t remember the one you describe (which may have been where their clarification came from) but that would sound OK. Sheehan definitely was playing the rope-a-dope and dived to avoid being tackled (can’t call it tackled really, just blocked/stopped lol), so shouldn’t have been awarded (I wasn’t aware of this last definition so just thought it was a very smart move). Was it premeditated? I’m not sure, but he could definitely have collected someones head if that was the case. And I guess even if he saw the space, I guess it’s not something they can allow as others might try it and get it terribly wrong?


Well summed up Miz. I have been thinking the whole situation of events that lead to this type of sneaky move is the problem, particularly as it relates to the difficulty and effort defenders now go to stop such situations (like say Slippers try), where players go extremely low to drive from meters out (and in most cases plays just trying to dive under). It’s also ugly business seeing attempt after attempt to go in under the tacklers, especially with them not really being able to perform a ‘tackle’ at all. I would simply give the defenders their goal line. All they need is some part of the body on or behind, and this will stop the play (being the fuel to this fire) from being attempted I reckon.

39 Go to comments
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