Chronic back injury forces Sanderson to retire at 26

Professional club rugby in England suffered another dispiriting injury setback yesterday when Alex Sanderson, the Saracens and England back-row forward, announced his enforced retirement from the sport at the age of 26. Sanderson had been suffering from an increasingly serious back condition - seven prolapsed discs, no less - for the best part of two years, and despite making some early-season Premiership appearances he had no option but to accept strong medical advice after another bout of acute discomfort in October.

The news comes only weeks after Ian Peel, the Newcastle prop, called it a day following a training-ground accident which left him with a damaged neck. Peel was warned that he risked paralysis if he carried on playing.

Sanderson's disappearance from the active rugby scene is not without its ironies, for it was widely accepted that he set new standards of fitness in Premiership rugby. A ton-of-bricks tackler with a streak of purest aggression who might have made England's squad for the last World Cup but for an unusually tepid performance in a warm-up game against France in Marseilles, he was the talk of every top-flight scout during his teens. Indeed, it was widely assumed that he, rather than his older brother Pat, would build an international career for himself. Pat, of course, was one of England's stand-out performers in the autumn Test series.

Happily, Alex will stay involved with Saracens, having accepted a coaching role.

"I'd like to thank the club for giving me the opportunity," he said yesterday. "I'm not one to sit around feeling sorry for myself.

"It's a massive disappointment to have to stop playing, but you have to take the positives from all the disappointments you suffer in life. It is at times like these that you learn most about yourself. This is something which has been with me for the last 20 months, so I always knew the end was around the corner. I'd hoped it wasn't going to be so soon, but it is a chronic problem that isn't going to get better."

There was more serious injury news yesterday when Newcastle announced that Lee Dickson, the England Under-21 scrum-half on the brink of a Premiership breakthrough at Kingston Park, would miss the rest of the season after injuring himself in the win over Wasps last weekend. Dickson requires reconstructive surgery on his knee after wrecking an anterior cruciate ligament. At a conservative estimate, he will not play for eight months.

London Irish, meanwhile, were the first Premiership side to reveal the fruits of courting the Samoan tourists - a popular hobby among the Premiership clubs when the Pacific islanders arrived in London for last weekend's one-off Test at Twickenham. Sailosi Tagicakibau, the side-stepping Super 12 full-back whose recent performances for Taranaki and the Waikato Chiefs in New Zealand impressed many good judges, has signed a three-year deal and will join the Exiles before Christmas.