Short-lived retirement for Rory Kockott as he signs for Top 14 club
Former France international Rory Kockott has ended his short-lived retirement to take up a short-term playing contract at Stade Francais. The 37-year-old South African, who was capped 11 times by Les Bleus under Philippe Saint-Andre, was set to call it quits after his stellar 12-year stint at Castres came to an end after the 2022/23 season.
However, those boots won’t be hung up just yet as Kockott has taken up the offer of a Rugby World Cup cover deal at Stade Francais due to the delayed arrival of New Zealander Brab Webber and an injury to Hugo Zabalza.
A statement read: “Stade Francais is pleased to welcome Rory Kockott, the French international with 11 caps, to its professional team. Engaged as a World Cup joker, the club will count on Rory's experience and professionalism to make a successful start to the season during the World Cup period.
“Rory, 37, spent 12 seasons at Castres Olympique where he was twice crowned France champion. The scrum-half will join the professional squad next Monday. The whole Club welcomes Rory.”
Assistant coach Paul Gustard said: "We are very pleased to welcome Rory's reinforcement at scrum-half. One of our recruits, Brad Weber, will join us only after the end of the World Cup because of his contract with the New Zealand federation.
“Also, unfortunately in this pre-season we recorded the temporary injury of one of our other recruits, Hugo Zabalza (between four and six weeks depending on the medical advice).
“In this position, we identified a need to strengthen ourselves because only Jules Gimbert and Thibault Motassi are available today and in case of problems, we needed coverage for our first three games (a trip to Perpignan followed by Oyonnax and Montpellier at home). Rory was available, competitive and wanted the challenge.”
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Don’t pay a blind bit of notice to Lukie… he likes the sound of his own voice and is always looking for something controversial to say. He has been banging on about Leinster's defensive system all season like he knows something Jacques Nienebar doesn’t. Which is the reason why he didn’t apply for the job obviously
Go to commentsI’m all for speeding up the game. But can we be certain that the slowness of the game contributed to fans walking out? I’m not so sure. Super rugby largely suffered from most fans only being able to, really, follow the games played in their own time zone. So at least a third of the fan base wasn’t engaged at any point in time. As a Saffer following SA teams in the URC - I now watch virtually every European game played on the weekend. In SR, I wouldn’t be bothered to follow the games being played on the other side of the world, at weird hours, if my team wasn’t playing. I now follow the whole tournament and not just the games in my time zone. Second, with New Zealand teams always winning. It’s like formula one. When one team dominates, people lose interest. After COVID, with SA leaving and Australia dipping in form, SR became an even greater one horse race. Thats why I think Japan’s league needs to get in the mix. The international flavor of those teams could make for a great spectacle. But surely if we believe that shaving seconds off lost time events in rugby is going to draw fans back, we should be shown some figures that supports this idea before we draw any major conclusions. Where are the stats that shows these changes have made that sort of impact? We’ve measured down to the average no. Of seconds per game. Where the measurement of the impact on the fanbase? Does a rugby “fan” who lost interest because of ball in play time suddenly have a revived interest because we’ve saved or brought back into play a matter of seconds or a few minutes each game? I doubt it. I don’t thinks it’s even a noticeable difference to be impactful. The 20 min red card idea. Agreed. Let’s give it a go. But I think it’s fairer that the player sent off is substituted and plays no further part in the game as a consequence.
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