FARRELL TO STAY
England captain stands by Sarries despite relegation Scale of club’s cheating laid bare in leaked report
England captain Owen Farrell will remain at Saracens despite their relegation after being given assurances he will still be picked for the national team.
On the day his club’s salary cap skulduggery came fully to light, it emerged Farrell is among a group of international stars set to take a ‘sabbatical’ year — playing a limited part in Saracens’ Championship campaign.
Farrell, Maro Itoje, Elliot daly and Jamie george had talks with England head coach Eddie Jones and also held one- on- one meetings with Saracens executives this week before agreeing to stay. and as Premiership
Rugby agreed to publish the full, explosive salary cap report into Saracens’ cheating, the painful details were leaked late last night.
It revealed that in 2016-17 they overshot the £7million cap by £1.1m, the next year by £98,000 and then by £906,000 in 2018-19.
nigel Wray’s co-investments with Billy and Mako Vunipola, Richard Wigglesworth and Itoje, and property deals with former player Chris ashton were also laid bare.
The 103-page report, leaked to Sky news, reveals that chairman Wray, who has since resigned, spent £1.3m by entering into joint property ventures with players. He invested £450,000 in a company majority-owned by the
Vunipolas, made a co-investment of £220,000 into Wigglesworth’s company and invested £250,000 with Itoje.
Also, Ashton paid 80 per cent towards a house that was worth £1.4m and another director paid 20 per cent.
Itoje (below) is a key part of the report. He was paid £95,000 in three lump sums by a company based at Saracens which took care of Allianz Park hospitality, and was run by Wray’s daughter Lucy.
Itoje is said to have not attended any of the events.
Furthermore, Wray and two other directors paid £1.6m for a 30 per cent stake in Itoje’s image rights company — based on a valuation from financial services giants PwC, but PRL said that was double what they were worth, based on a second valuation from a different firm, and claimed this was done because Itoje was being underpaid in ‘normal’ salary.
Wray said all these extra arrangements were legitimate investments and not additional rewards for playing at Saracens. But the verdict from the independent panel tasked with investigating this malpractice was they should have counted as salary.
With the details now out in the open, Saracens coach Mark McCall has begun thrashing out plans for the disgraced club’s spell in the second tier — which will see the biggest stars stay at the club.
McCall said: ‘ The international players had a very clear view on what they wanted to do — all of them — and luckily enough that coincided with what we wanted.
‘Eddie Jones is on the whole happy to select players who are established and Lions coach Warren Gatland is the same. A lot of our players are proven international players and you’ve seenn New Zealand players having sabbatical-type seasons. It would be like that.
‘ I think Warren is keen to get as fresh a Lions team as possible to take to South Africa and certainly our situation, in a funny kind of way, iss going to help him.
‘They have been on this treadmill for 10 years and they are seeing it as a positive where next year can be one where they are freshened up, physically recover and get better, play enough rugby and go on a Lions tour at the end of it fresh — which is not normal.’
England’s squad fly to Portugal today for their Six Nations warmup camp and Farrell said last night there will be clear-the-air talks with players from rival clubs.
The skipper said: ‘When we get together it will be clear, because we’re very good at being honest and open about stuff and getting stuff out there and sorting stuff out if we need to. We’ll see if we need to.’ The Saracens hierarchy have already held talks with three-quarters of their squad and have split the players into three categories.
Senior players such as Farrell will play only bit-part roles in the Championship, with the club exploring the option of several showcase fixtures in South Africa. A second tranche of players will play the bulk of the club’s Championship fixtures and is likely to consist of older clubmen and developing talent.
Younger England players, such as Ben Earl and Max Malins, are likely to be sent on loan and interim chief executive Ed Griffiths has already opened talks with rival clubs.
‘There is a group of players who are at a stage of their career where they need to maintain momentum by playing at the highest level, so those are the players who might be looking for opportunities to continue playing in the Premiership,’ said Griffiths, who added that pay cuts have not been discuss discussed. ‘I have had several calls over the last week from Premiership clubs. The telephone calls always start with them saying, “Erm, sorry to phone”, and I have ssaid, “Don’t worry, you’re not vultures, you are lifeboats”. We will work to ensure players who nneed momentum in their career playing at the highest level have that opportunity.
‘When other clubs said would X or Y be available it was not the England players — the ones you call the rock stars — they were interested in.
‘Many clubs have decided that the best way to put together a competitive squad is not to employ England players, because they are expensive and they are away a lot of the time.’
Griffiths backed the club’s call to publish the salary cap investigation after chairman Neil Golding told PRL that they wanted to see it released ‘in full’.
There is not a salary cap in the Championship per se but any team wanting promotion needs to have complied with the cap when in the second tier.