What Sale have said about injury that forced George Ford off early
England fly-half George Ford will undergo tests on Monday to determine the extent of the injury he sustained during Sale’s 45-26 Gallagher Premiership defeat at Saracens. Ford was forced out of the action just seven minutes into the clash at StoneX Stadium, leaving the pitch soon after attempting a long-range penalty.
Sharks physio Navdeep Sandhu said of the 31-year-old playmaker – who missed England’s summer tour of Japan and New Zealand with a damaged achilles – after the match: “Yeah, so George just felt his quad when he went for that long-distance kick.
“He thought like he felt he could carry on, but it was just slightly aware of it and I suspected that that meant it would get worse and worse and worse as the game carried on. So we decided to make the change. We just had a look at him in the changing room and he is a little bit sore.
“It is not too bad and we will get some imaging on that on Monday morning. It is probably too early to say [how severe his injury is], the fact we are getting an image of it means we are suspecting something. But we probably do not know enough.”
Sharks boss Alex Sanderson has also been in the wars, suffering a rib injury after a collision with one of his players in training. Sandhu added: “Alex got ran into by a player and to be fair, the player did not make the gain line, but Alex got a couple of rib fractures for his troubles so he will be top of the list on Monday morning. It was Tom Roebuck, he did not make the gain line.”
Saracens eventually ran out winners to make it two wins from two this season, but boss Mark McCall admits he was disappointed with his side’s first-half performance. The hosts trailed 13-12 at the break after Gus Warr crossed the whitewash, but two tries from Elliot Daly and fine finishes from Tobias Elliott and Jamie George wrapped up a comeback win for Saracens.
Alex Lozowski took over kicking duties for Sarries in place of Owen Farrell, who joined French giants Racing 92 in the summer, and he slotted over 22 points from the tee in a superb display. “I thought Sale had a lot to contend with, losing a player like George Ford early doors was really tough for them,” he said.
“It was a proper contest for 50 minutes or so and we were a little bit disappointed with just overall how we were in the first half. Our energy was not quite at the levels that we would want it to be at, but we thought that improved significantly in the second half and we were able to build a lot of pressure in the second against a good team. So we obviously got some things right.”
Regarding Lozowski’s performance, McCall said: “Yeah, he is one of those people who was just waiting to emerge as one of the voices in the squad. He had a really strong pre-season on and off the field. He is playing well and I think he enjoys the responsibility of goal-kicking.”
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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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