Sunday 30 October 2016 19:36, UK
Saracens are searching for experience to fill the gap in their second row and are interested in Australian Will Skelton
England pair Maro Itoje and George Kruis have both been ruled out with injuries, while Alistair Hargreaves has been forced to retire due to concussion.
A move for Eben Etzebeth came to nothing, but Saracens are interested in giant Australia lock Skelton, according to their Director of Rugby Mark McCall.
"Will Skelton is one of the few people we've looked at," said McCall. "He was named in the Wallabies' touring party last week. We're still looking.
"We've got some young fellas here, so I don't want to bring somebody ordinary in.
"We want someone who will add some value over three months and if they can't we won't bring them in."
Flanker Michael Rhodes started in the second row against Leicester Tigers on Saturday, and the South African responded with a man-of-the-match performance which drew praise from McCall.
"Michael Rhodes did a great job for us at the scrum and was effective around the park.
"He was happy to help the team by playing in the second row, he understands the situation we're in."
Saracens' outing against Leicester ended in frustration as they failed to gain the bonus-point despite scoring their third try after 44 minutes.
"It was massively frustrating the bonus point didn't come," said McCall.
"The half-time score of 17-3 was about right, but when we got to 24-3 we were really sloppy. We had the ball for 15 minutes but did our own thing when the job wasn't done.
"It's a big lesson for us because we didn't get the job done that we wanted to. We spent the last 15-20 minutes defending which is not what we wanted to do.
"We should have got five points and it's frustrating that we didn't."
