Saracens are confident Maro Itoje will sign a new deal and disappoint other clubs keen to make him one of the best-paid players in the country. With Itoje’s current contract at the Premiership champions due to expire next summer, the Guardian understands Harlequins could be among the suitors should the England forward opt for a fresh challenge.
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Since signing his last club contract in 2016, Itoje has developed into an international regular and was a starting British & Irish Lion in the New Zealand Tests last year. With average player wages having also risen and the salary cap fixed until 2020, even a champion club like Saracens are being forced to make increasingly tough decisions about whom to retain and release.
No club, however, are officially allowed to approach Itoje before 1 January and Saracens believe the 24-year-old will end up staying in north London. “Talks with Maro have been unbelievably positive,” said a club spokesman, suggesting the player was “in no rush” to leave the club with whom he signed his first professional contract in 2012.
Since then Itoje has helped Saracens win back-to-back European Cups, three Premiership titles and helped England claim two Six Nations titles. Saracens’ director of rugby, Mark McCall, has long felt clubs who produce players who subsequently develop into top internationals should be granted special dispensation under the salary cap.
“It would be an unbelievable shame if we had to lose players we have grown ourselves,” he said last year. “My view is that if you genuinely bring a player through your academy system then there should be a limit on what he costs you in the salary cap. To be penalised for having all these academy players who are only asking for their market value and not to be able to afford them doesn’t seem right.”
Saracens, who face Cardiff Blues in the Champions Cup on Sunday, have a raft of key England squad members on their books along with Itoje, including Owen Farrell, the Vunipola brothers, Jamie George, George Kruis, Richard Wigglesworth, Nick Isiekwe and Alex Lozowski. Keeping all of them happy may well mean bidding farewell to several older squad members in 2019, even though the World Cup will deprive the club of a large chunk of their squad at the beginning of next season.
Exeter’s highly-respected director of rugby, Rob Baxter, meanwhile, says he is no hurry to apply for the England head coach’s job following next year’s World Cup. Nigel Melville, the Rugby Football Union’s interim chief executive, says he intends to start “meeting everyone who is a potential target for us” in the new year but Baxter remains to be convinced the role would suit him.
“If I’m honest with you it doesn’t feel like I’m ready to move into my next job,” he told the Guardian. “If someone said, ‘Are you ready to start saying ‘I want to have the England job’ or throw my hat into the ring’, I’d probably say no.
“ People are probably aware of the unique situation I’m in here.
“I like to think I’m not one of those people you could describe as a career coach, who constantly moves around. I’ve always been Exeter-based. That’s where I am until my wife suddenly decides she doesn’t want to live in Exeter any more – and that doesn’t look likely at the moment.”