This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with the continued plight of Saracens, a fitting finale and an old habit dying hard…

The wrong people punished

The end of Nigel Wray at Saracens is not the end of the Saracens salary cap breach saga. A team that has often managed to keep itself isolated from outside noise is doing so like never before as angry fans from all corners bang furiously on the Allianz Park windows.

But after the initial denial, then the U-turn to ‘total honesty and transparency,’ the very obvious question raised by the findings is beginning to be answered.

That question is, namely: If Saracens were breaching the salary cap last season and they’ve managed to strengthen the squad with acquisitions such as Elliot Daly for this season, isn’t there a small chance they might be somewhere beyond the salary cap line this season too?

It seems now that even Sarries are acknowledging that this might be so. New CEO Ed Griffiths is publicly determined to show that Saracens have their house in order as soon as possible, hinting at either imminent wage cuts or playing staff cuts. The human cost of the club’s transgressions is about to become tangible.

And yet, these cuts would or could, to our mind, sully the disciplinary process by passing on the burden of punishment to those who had nothing actively to do with the crime.

While one or two big-ticket players would be able to pick up a new team quickly (and maybe the offloading of a Vunipola or Carre would be all it takes to balance the accounting equations), those other, lesser, squad players who might find themselves out of a job, or few hundred quid a month as a consequence of the sums would have every right to be deeply aggrieved.

Not once during this process has there been a hint that players were complicit in the salary cap breach. Yet ultimately, while Saracens plough on – and anybody who saw the demolition of Worcester on Saturday will know for sure that the points deduction is not going to lead to relegation – some players will feel the effects of this for longer.

Nor is this aspect Saracens’ fault either. If they are still in breach of the cap, they have to take measures to get under it again and there’s no other way.

But this does show that while the fine was painful, and while the points deduction is season-changing, the punishment to the club still does not fit the crime. As many an official and player at Exeter has pointed out: how many of their players have suffered by having their probable titles cheated away? How many players might have been in Exeter’s winning squad in 2017 rather than elsewhere were it not for salary cap adjustments in the years before?

This is why, ultimately – and going on the basis only of what we know – we believe that Saracens should have been stripped of any titles they won while in breach of the cap, and why we also think that the club should have been summarily relegated.

But that’s only going on what we know. We also believe, perhaps even more fervently than the issue of the title-stripping, that the full judgement and submissions of the Saracens case need to be published (edited for privacy) so we can all know, once and for all, just how devious or not the club has been.

The pledge for transparency going forward from the club is laudable. The utter lack of it regarding the issue that has led us here is terrible PR from the game’s administrators. The fallout continues, and we still don’t know exactly what from.

A fitting farewell

Sergio Parisse will bow out on the pitch after all, in front of friends, fans and family in Rome.

That Parisse missed out on his 143rd and final cap against New Zealand was a little-mentioned impact of the typhoon that killed 98 and left more than half a million without power at the World Cup.

It would have been a finale with an element of full circle too, against the same opponents 142 matches later.

But the end of an extraordinary 18-year international career will, rightly, come on the pitch after all, and Italy’s rugby fraternity will doubtless be standing to applaud a phenomenal servant as he takes his bow. A moment of this Six Nations to look forward to.

While on the subject of transparency

How on earth did Owen Farrell get away with this one?!

Having created the benchmark for no-arm tackles during the years before the World Cup, Farrell was twice victim during it, both times his assailant was red-carded. Finally, we all thought, Farrell was getting a taste of his own medicine and the correct disciplinary protocols were being applied. The no-arm tackle scourge is gone.

And then that. He didn’t bend. He didn’t wrap. His shoulder slammed into his opponent’s neck. And even with the benefit of slow-motion replay and time to deliberate, the citing panel finds no wrong?

Someone explain it to us. We’re dumbfounded.