Hamstring injury returns to rule out Catt
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Your support makes all the difference.The cat may have come back in the old Sonny James song, but the same is not true for Mike Catt. The Bath and England fly-half has struggled all season with a hamstring injury and there must be serious concerns as to when, or whether, he will ever overcome the problem.
He had just put together his longest run of games for Bath all season, four, when the muscle went again in training early last week and he has had to pull out of today's Zurich Premiership match against Saracens at the Recreation Ground.
Catt has appeared in just half of Bath's matches thus far, three times having to be replaced – in the match against Sale he lasted just five minutes – and once coming on as a substitute. He was named in England squads up to the beginning of November before their manager, Clive Woodward, decided Catt needed to prove his fitness with Bath before he could be risked in Tests against New Zealand, Australia and South Africa.
Two of those trials ended with Catt not playing a full game and it was after Woodward had again talked up the fly-half's ability last week that the hamstring hoodoo struck once more.
Recovery from injury takes longer the older one gets and Catt is 31, which, if not old, is at least middle-aged in a sporting context.
"Catty has tweaked his hamstring," Mike Foley, the Bath head coach, said. "It is settling down, but he will not be involved this weekend."
It is looking increasingly likely Catt will miss more weekends, and his chances of making it to the World Cup with England this autumn and adding to his 56 caps must be in serious doubt.
Bath will struggle without him. Four of their last half dozen Premiership fixtures are at home and there can be no room for error if they are to haul themselves off the bottom of the table by the end of the season.
Saracens, in seventh place in the table, will field Thomas Castaignède at outside centre, another of Catt's positions, instead of full-back for today's encounter.
"We've brought Thomas into the centre to get his hands on the ball more often," Wayne Shelford, Saracens' coach, explained.
Harlequins have decided to "retire" the No 9 jersey worn by Nick Duncombe for the rest of the season as a mark of respect to the 21-year-old scrum-half who died last month from blood poisoning.
The Harlequins team will also sport a new logo, ND9, under the NEC badge on their jerseys in memory of their late team-mate when they run out against Bristol at the Memorial Stadium tomorrow. That new logo will stay at least until the end of the season as well.
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