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Sale Sharks sign Springbok flyhalf Du Preez on three-year-deal
By Online Editors
Sale Sharks have announced the signing of flyhalf Rob du Preez on a three-year deal.
Rob will be re-joining the North-West Gallagher Premiership club after the 2019 Super Rugby campaign concludes after an impressive loan spell in Manchester earlier this season.
The 25-year-old fly-half started his career with the Western Province and the Stormers in Cape Town, making 57 appearances over 4 years, scoring 483 points. He then went on to join the C-Cell Sharks in Durban at the start of the 2018 season, where he won the Currie Cup under the tutelage of his father Robert Snr before spending a short time on loan with Sale in the Gallagher Premiership at the end of the year.
He instantly impressed, often in adverse conditions, scoring 81 points in 9 games for the Manchester-based side.
Rob will re-join Sale Sharks at the end of this year’s Super Rugby campaign.
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Commenting on the announcement, Rob said:
“I’m delighted to have signed for Sale and was very flattered when Dimes called and asked if I would consider joining the boys full-time in Manchester.
It was an extremely difficult decision to leave The Sharks and Durban, especially with the family connections I have here but I feel as though it is the right time in my career for a new challenge, a change of scenery and feel I can continue to test myself in the Gallagher Premiership after the taster I had in 2018.
The club have extremely high ambitions and with the calibre of signings that Sale are making I feel I can play a big part in the future of the club and can’t wait to get started in the UK.
In the meantime, I am fully committed to the Cell-C Sharks here in South Africa and will give everything I have during this year’s Super Rugby season and hopefully build on last year’s win in the Currie Cup to produce some more special memories before I leave.”
Sale Sharks’ Director of Rugby Steve Diamond added, “Rob came to us last year from the Cell-C Sharks with an outstanding pedigree and impressed everybody here at Sale from day one.
He quickly established himself as an integral part of the matchday squad and in his short time at the club fitted into the environment at Carrington seamlessly. Rob is exactly the calibre of player we are looking for in our quest to challenge for the Gallagher Premiership and we look forward to welcoming him back to Carrington after the conclusion of the 2019 Super Rugby competition.”
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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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