Welcome back Brendan Venter.............

[tigercaspian]

http://www.therugbypaper.co.uk/latest-n ... don-irish/

[Iain]

Never forgiven him for a horrible high tackle on Craig Joiner at Welford Road when he played for Irish. Only got a yellow card too - an absolute scandal.

[teds]

Not to mention several on Matt Dawson...

[Cagey Tiger]

Not to mention several on Matt Dawson...

That I can almost forgive

Really dislike him from his days at Sarries.

[tigerburnie]

He's a doctor you know...........................

[tigercaspian]

He's a doctor you know...........................

I did indeed. I also realised when starting this thread that he has been unpopular. But, if we now grudgingly respect the current Sarries and what they have achieved, I wouldn't forget that the Doctor played quite a part in laying the foundations, along with Borthwick and others (and apparently a pile of Rand).

[voice of the crumbie]

He's a doctor you know...........................

So were Crippen, Jekyll and Frankenstein.

[Cagey Tiger]

He's a doctor you know...........................

So were Crippen, Jekyll and Frankenstein.

And Josef Mengele.

[tigercaspian]

I was right.....he's unpopular.......

[strawclearer]

He's a doctor you know...........................

So were Crippen, Jekyll and Frankenstein.

And Josef Mengele.

I don't want to appear to be a super-pedant by correcting a pedant's amendment to another pedant but - I don't think Frankenstein was a Doctor, merely a science student.

(I'll get my coat and make a bolt for it...)

[Cagey Tiger]

I don't want to appear to be a super-pedant by correcting a pedant's amendment to another pedant but - I don't think Frankenstein was a Doctor, merely a science student.

(I'll get my coat and make a bolt for it...)

Couldn't resist the challenge as "Dr Frankenstein" rang a bell. In the original book, he is a student, but in THE film (1935 with Boris Karloff as the Monster), he was a doctor and had a different first name according to IMDb.

I don't wear a coat, so I'll get my anorak

[Tigerbeat]

Venter will continue to practise as a medical doctor in his native South Africa while working for London Irish.

The former Springboks centre and London Irish player-coach takes on a role similar to the one he performed at Saracens from early 2011.

"I'll come over to the club once a month to work with the coaches and to help with the planning," he told BBC Radio Berkshire.

"I won't be hands-on from day-to-day. I've spent some time with the players already and the reality is we need to crawl before we start running.

"That's maybe been our problem all along. We'll be very well prepared, we won't talk about coming straight back up, we'll take it game by game."

[mol2]

I think welcome is probably stretching politeness to its limit where BV is concerned!

[DickyP]

Well there's no denying he's a 'character', which after the charisma-free Tom Coventry can't be a bad thing. He's certainly likely to instil the one thing that was truly missing last season, which was back-bone.