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May 26, 2010

Posted on 05/26/2010

We're not naughty boys

Sarries chief executive Edward Griffiths goes on the offensive at the club's training ground on Wednesday © Getty Images

With their coach banned from Saturday's Premiership final and the club branded upstarts, Saracens are making few friends. But, their chief executive Edward Griffiths tells The Independent's Chris Hewett, they are just misunderstood.

"It should be some occasion, the Guinness Premiership final at Twickenham on Saturday evening. Saracens, the surprise package of the campaign, will be playing at the home of one of their freshly-made enemies, the Rugby Football Union, against one of their long-standing enemies, Leicester – possibly in the enforced absence of their director of rugby Brendan Venter, who has been upsetting the apple-cart all season and now finds himself barred from the stadium and its environs. Such draconian banning orders are rare indeed, but then, Venter is a rarity himself.
"This evening, the World Cup-winning Springbok centre and practising GP – he still runs a surgery in Cape Town, albeit from a distance – will pitch up at a London hotel and attempt to persuade a second RFU tribunal boasting two QCs that the law as interpreted by the governing body's chief disciplinary officer, Judge Jeff Blackett, is something of an ass. Earlier this month, Venter engaged in a full and frank exchange of views with a group of Leicester supporters during a league game at Welford Road and picked up a 14-week match-day coaching ban (plus the added extra of exclusion from Twickers) for his trouble. It was his second conviction for "behaviour prejudicial to the interests of the game" in a matter of months, and while he feels extremely hard done by, those who do not like the cut of his jib think he deserves everything he continues to get."

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