Seventy-one-year-old Wray leaves with immediate effectFamily will continue to give financial backing to SaracensNigel Wray, the Premiership’s longest serving administrator having taken over Saracens in the first season of professionalism 24 years ago, has resigned as chairman two months after the club was fined more than £5m and docked 35 league points for breaching salary-cap regulations. The 71-year old will remain the owner of the loss-making double champions, but the fear of supporters is that he will look to sell up and plunge Europe’s most successful club in the last decade into uncertainty.
When Saracens were found guilty of the breach by an independent disciplinary panel at the beginning of November, Wray said he would be carrying on as chairman and maintained that the co-investment schemes he arranged with a number of leading players at the club, such as Owen Farrell and the Vunipola brothers, were not against the rules as they could not be considered as an add-on to salaries because of the risks they carried. He had not reckoned with the depth of feeling against him among the other Premiership clubs – he has not travelled to an away league game since the outcome of the hearing – and concluded that his continuing presence as the club’s leading figure would threaten its rehabilitation.