club was still supportive of Auvaa and would not punish him.<\/a><\/p>\nAfter that incident, hooker Jamie George had rallied to his defence. While describing Auvaa as “immature” and his behaviour as “unacceptable”, George pointed to his youth and distance from home.<\/p>\n
“He’s a young kid who has only left Samoa once,” explained George in June.<\/p>\n
“A lot of young people get it wrong in some way, shape or form. If we just got rid of all those people, a lot of lads [in the England squad] wouldn’t be standing on the field today. We will look after him.<\/p>\n
“He is a fantastic prospect in terms of his rugby. If he gets his head down, then he is going to be a lot of hard work for a lot of teams in the Prem.”<\/p>\n
On Tuesday afternoon, after Auvaa’s latest indiscretion and subsequent defenestration, George was again in front of the media.<\/p>\n
This time was different.<\/p>\n
“Brendan [Venter, technical director] and our CEO [Ed Coetzee] did a great job in terms of standing up, addressing it and making sure we moved on,” said George.<\/p>\n
“We’ve got every faith that they’re going to make all the right decisions and do all the right things so that we can focus on the rugby.”<\/p>\n
For all his promise, Auvaa, who has already captained his country at Under-20 and ‘A’ level, had wasted his final chance.<\/p>\n
It wasn’t just his off-field indiscretions that had worried Saracens staff.<\/p>\n
He was on loan to Ampthill last season and, while he generally held his own impressively in the second tier Championship, he was also sent off twice for violent conduct.<\/p>\n
Against Hartpury in November, he punched an opposition player in the face in the aftermath of conceding a try.<\/p>\n
In March, again against Hartpury, he kicked someone in the head at the bottom of a ruck.<\/p>\n
Auvaa’s youth, recent arrival in England and the stress of supporting his father through illness back home in Samoa were put forward in mitigation.<\/p>\n
“I have worked extremely hard on my discipline this season as it is something that is important to the game,” said Auvaa, as he gave evidence over the latter incident.<\/p>\n
“I know it’s a big area for me to continue to work on.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The end came for Totoa Auvaa via a quick one-two combination. Early on Monday afternoon, Saracens announced an internal investigation into reports that the 21-year-old Samoan had been involved in a punch-up in St Albans. Four hours later, another statement was released. The investigation was done. Auvaa’s fate was decided. A player, flown over and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36195,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rugby"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36194"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36196,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36194\/revisions\/36196"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}