Canada prop Menin agrees new contract with Exeter
Canada prop DaLeaka Menin has signed a new deal to stay at Exeter for the 2025-26 Premiership Women's Rugby season.The 30-year-old has played 61 times for the Chiefs since joining in 2021 and has scored 10 tries for the club.She is currently with the Canada squad preparing to tour South Africa before this year's World Cup in England. "DaLeaka has been the cornerstone of our pack for the last three years," interim head coach Steve Salvin said."Her front-row partnership with Emily Tuttosi and Hope Rogers has been the platform for so many of our best performances."However, DaLeaka in the loose is also a terrifying prospect, as we saw in PAC4. "I am so pleased she has chosen to stay with us for what we hope will be an exciting season for the Chiefs."
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The Sun
21 minutes ago
- The Sun
Man Utd captain Bruno Fernandes rakes in £8million off the pitch after snubbing mega-money Saudi Arabia transfer
BRUNO FERNANDES has scored £8million in image rights payments - softening the blow of snubbing the mega riches on offer at Al-Hilal. The Manchester United captain recently rejected an eye-watering three-year tax-free deal worth £200million to move to Saudi Arabia. 2 2 Al-Hilal were reportedly ready to pay United a £100million fee. However, Fernandes, 30, insisted that he wants to remain in Europe and play at the 'top level'. And while his decision could cost him hundreds of millions of pounds, latest accounts for his image rights firm show he has tucked away £8million in off-pitch earnings. Paperwork covering the 2023/24 season shows the attacker has piled up £8.3million in BF8 Sports Limited, the firm he used for off-field pay. That figure shot up £2.1million compared to the previous year. That works out at £175,000 a month on top of his playing pay. After paying bills, the Portuguese star is left with £7,849,371. The company was set up in 2020 and is listed as 'other sports activities'. JOIN SUN VEGAS: GET £50 BONUS Fernandes is reportedly on £12.5million a year at United, with bonuses, image rights and lucrative sponsorship deals with brands such as Adidas and EA Sports earning him additional millions. He is also reported to have a number of properties in both England and Portugal. Paul Pogba breaks down in tears as ex-Man Utd star seals return to football after doping ban with Ligue 1 side Monaco Fernandes is under contract at Old Trafford until the summer of 2027. Man United chiefs possess an option to extend the deal by a further 12 months. Manager Ruben Amorim has made clear he believes United must keep hold of Fernandes if they want to be successful. He said: 'He is seeing us taking some actions to change all the things and I think that is all that he wants to stay. 'He's saying 'no' to a lot of things, but it shows that he wants to win. 'He's really young, he's really good. He needs to be in the best league in the world.'
The Guardian
42 minutes ago
- The Guardian
‘I've had some honest conversations with myself': Gary O'Neil keen to step back on to management train
'The journey's been pretty high speed,' Gary O'Neil says as he opens up on a whirlwind start to his managerial career. 'When you're in work it's different because there's always another massive game coming, whereas this has really given me time to have a deep dive into everything. The real benefit is the chance to breathe.' Sometimes there is an upside to life slowing down. O'Neil has had time to reflect and ask himself tough questions in the seven months since his sacking by Wolves. Why did it unravel after such a promising start? O'Neil is hungry. He has devoted a lot of time to studying set pieces and speaking to experts in the field given that a poor record at dead balls played a big part in Wolves' struggles this past season. O'Neil is not bitter about Wolves, who were 19th in the Premier League when they decided it was time for a change. The 42-year-old is happy that Vítor Pereira guided the club to safety. It is worth pointing out that O'Neil had not been coaching long when Bournemouth asked him to go from first-team coach to interim manager after a 9-0 defeat by Liverpool led to Scott Parker's departure at the start of the 2022-23 season. He started at Liverpool's academy and remembers making little mistakes in training. It was part of the learning process. 'It's been two and a bit full-on seasons of Premier League football straight in,' O'Neil says. 'I don't think you'll find many people in any industry who feel they've hit their peak after two years. I knew there were going to be gaps because that's the journey. You close your gaps the longer you're in it.' O'Neil has been to St George's Park to speak to the Football Association's technical director, John McDermott, and to deliver presentations to aspiring coaches. He has been to the rugby league side Wigan Warriors to observe their manager, Matt Peet. O'Neil loved seeing how Wigan's players took responsibility for their preparation. Experiencing those cultures has left O'Neil thinking about how to build his own at his next club. Bournemouth's squad was easy to manage. They finished 15th in their first year back in the top flight. Bill Foley's takeover was in the works and O'Neil was told that survival was key. He adjusted his tactics accordingly. No promoted side have stayed up since but O'Neil was replaced by Andoni Iraola at the end of the year. He is proud to have played a part in Bournemouth's rise. What does O'Neil make of the debate around a manager's philosophy. 'I don't like the word,' he says. 'The time you use your philosophy the most is actually in the job interview. In the two jobs I've gone into we've had to be incredibly adaptable. 'I have a real clear way in how I want my team to play. When I got to Wolves there wasn't all the components there that would have fitted into exactly what I wanted this to be. It had been a back five for a very long time.' O'Neil was parachuted in at Molineux after Julen Lopetegui left on the eve of the 2023-24 season. His first season featured doubles over Chelsea and Tottenham, a precious win at West Brom in the FA Cup and a stunning victory over Manchester City. 'You go through the goals we've scored, some of the quality, some of the results,' O'Neil says. 'Even the Fulham game last season, so much was off the training ground. There's a win over Chelsea at Stamford Bridge when we got four moves we'd worked on since we got there. 'If you only focus on the end, you can convince yourself that it was an unsuccessful experience, but it wasn't. We stayed at Wolves for a very long time. We've got that whole group of players from different cultures to buy into my way.' O'Neil, who really started thinking about management when an ankle injury threatened to end his playing career in 2011, has come prepared. He offers an insight into his methods and rigour by bringing up clips of his work with Pedro Neto and Matheus Cunha in training. He talks about using Neto on the right and teaching him how to become more unpredictable by coming in off the flank. Bukayo Saka was a reference point for the Portugal winger. O'Neil got into Neto about his final ball, telling him it had to be better if he wanted to play for a top club. There were endless drills on cutbacks with his right foot and inswinging crosses with his left. 'I was fortunate that Matheus and Pedro were both at an age where they were still ready to lap that stuff up,' O'Neil says. With Cunha, he focused on turning the Brazilian into an inside left who could get into positions to bend shots into the far corner with his right foot. So much work went into changing the new Manchester United forward's mentality; into making him more diligent without diminishing his maverick talent. Selling Neto to Chelsea last summer was disappointing. 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Sign up to Football Daily Kick off your evenings with the Guardian's take on the world of football after newsletter promotion Momentum eluded Wolves, the pressure rising at the start of the season. 'No matter how we played we still found a way to concede goals,' O'Neil says. 'Some of the data shows that we were still improving but we were never able to get a result. We're better than Newcastle for 70 minutes at home and lost 2-1. We took Manchester City close and concede a corner in the last minute.' Wolves had conceded 20 times from set pieces by the time O'Neil went. They had already sacked their set-piece coach, Jack Wilson, after losing 5-3 to Brentford. O'Neil points out that his defence was ravaged by Kilman going, Craig Dawson returning from groin surgery and Yerson Mosquera sustaining a serious knee injury. 'A lot was down to the bad luck of us missing people with aerial presence during that period,' he says. 'The more you concede, the more the confidence starts to drop. But things not going well forces your focus on to them. In my time between Bournemouth and Wolves, would I have been looking at set pieces much? Probably not. But because of how Wolves finished up it increases my focus. We'll definitely be much better at them the next time we go in.' O'Neil had a lower net spend than managers at similar clubs during his time at Wolves. The data was also favourable. Wolves' expected goals improved under O'Neil. But he accepts that results were not good enough. 'I felt we needed to get to January,' O'Neil says. 'We needed to plug the hole at the back. We signed a lot of players in the summer, but a lot of young players. We were going to try and have some older ones ready to go in. I always felt like we'd have enough to turn it around but in the end you accept your fate.' It did not help that there were flashpoints towards the end of O'Neil's time. Mario Lemina was stripped of the captaincy after clashing with teammates and squaring up to a member of the backroom team after an unlucky 2-1 defeat by West Ham. There were also angry scenes after O'Neil's final game, which ended in a 2-1 defeat by Ipswich. 'I think the players were incredibly frustrated on the inside and in the dressing room,' O'Neil says. 'We were still 100% together. There wasn't any letup at all. That West Ham game, we gave everything. But there were issues at the time, and the club were able to fix them in January.' Now for the next challenge. One charge against O'Neil is that he can be too emotional in post-match press conferences. 'I try to be honest,' he says. 'I'm really calm on the sideline. But I think it is important that you have some emotion in the job. It can be powerful for players. I'll always try and find the right balance and it will have been on my list of things that I looked at in my time out. 'There's been some honest conversations with myself in the mirror, with some of my coaching staff, with people that I trust around what we need to do. We're two years in and it's gone very quickly. Sort of like a high-speed train. You're on it and there's no real opportunity to get off. But now that we've managed to have a little debrief and figure out what the next one looks like, you pick the next train. You get ready to go again.'
Reuters
an hour ago
- Reuters
Springboks centre Esterhuizen embraces hybrid role among the forwards
CAPE TOWN, June 29 (Reuters) - The age of the hybrid rugby player may be nearer than many think as world champions South Africa continue to innovate, having intentionally used centre Andre Esterhuizen as a flank in Saturday's 54-7 win over the Barbarians in Cape Town. Springboks coach Rassie Erasmus has spoken at length in the past about developing players for multiple positions, and used Deon Fourie in both the front and back row of the scrum in their Rugby World Cup win in France in 2023. However, playing a back in the forwards, not due to injury but as a plan that has been months in the making, could usher in a new era for South Africa as Erasmus seeks new ways to keep the four-time World Cup winners at the top of the global game. He floated the idea to Esterhuizen at the start of the year and it is something they have been working on since. "I was actually waiting for the conversation to happen, it has been brought up in the past," Esterhuizen, 31, told reporters. "As I get older, you learn how you can slot in everywhere, how you can get yourself into the team more constantly. "You have to adapt as a player. I said I'd like to try it and I'm looking forward to what it can be. It will help me as a player and obviously it can help the team as well. Hopefully we see more of it in the future." Erasmus has long championed having players versatile enough to feature in several positions and believes it is an important factor in winning a World Cup. Not least because, in the Springboks' case, it allows more forwards among replacements to replenish their powerhouse pack and apply pressure on opponents for the full 80 minutes. Erasmus previously used loose-forward Kwagga Smith as cover on the wing, and says Esterhuizen's emergence as a forward option is simply the reverse of that plan. "I don't know if you can call him (Esterhuizen) a hybrid, but he is a backline player who can now also play in the forwards," he said. "If we get injuries, a guy like Andre just gives us an option, because he's been training with both the forwards and the backs." South Africa begin their international season with the first of two tests against Italy in Pretoria on Saturday.
