Jonny Wilkinson is set to finish his career with Toulon after being offered a new contract worth nearly £700,000 a year. The England fly-half, who has scored 135 league points this season and was this week named in the Top 14 All-Star team for 2009-10, is being urged by his club to agree the deal this month.
The Toulon owner, Mourad Boudjellal, said he is willing to pay whatever it costs to keep Wilkinson at the club and has offered the 31-year-old a 15% pay increase to stay on the Mediterranean for another two years.
"I am very happy in Toulon," Wilkinson said. "There is a passion for rugby and a great atmosphere. I have never experienced anything like it. I have no desire or reason to change teams. When you feel good, you can do your best. Having such a top team around me benefits my game. I still want to play but it depends on my body: at the moment it is very good.
"It was an honour to be voted into the Top 14 team of the season. It is maybe the best competition there is. It is a pleasure to play in the league but also a big challenge. We play against top teams and in big stadiums. It helps bring out the best in me."
Boudjellal said he is determined to keep Wilkinson. "He is one of the best fly-halves the game has ever seen. The way he is playing now reminds me of the Jonny Wilkinson of 2003 when England won the World Cup. He is, in my eyes, much stronger than last season and he is absolutely 100% committed to the club."
Wilkinson arrived in Toulon in the summer of 2009 after suffering six injury-plagued years but he has hardly missed a match since moving from Newcastle.
The Sale captain, James Gaskell, will miss the next two months after suffering an ankle injury during training this week. The 20-year old, the youngest captain in Premiership history, will be out of action until December, missing the start of the Sharks' Challenge Cup campaign.
It remains to be seen whether the Scarlets second-row Gavin Quinnell will play again after it was confirmed that surgery had failed to save the sight in the 26-year-old's left eye, which was damaged after an incident during Llanelli's Welsh Premiership match at Cross Keys last Saturday.
"It is not good news, we know that," Quinnell's mother, Medora, said. "He has lost his sight." Llanelli cited an unnamed Cross Keys player and are waiting for the Welsh Rugby Union to decide whether to take disciplinary action. The club asked Gwent police to investigate the circumstances of the injury and whether Quinnell was assaulted.
Northampton, the only English club to qualify for the Heineken Cup quarter-finals last season, start their European campaign tomorrow night against Castres at Franklin's Gardens. The Saints' director of rugby, Jim Mallinder, believes the Premiership will mount a stronger challenge this year.
"There was disappointment about how the English clubs did in Europe last season but most of the clubs involved are doing well in the Premiership. We want to repeat our last Heineken Cup campaign in making the quarter-finals but also go a stage further. We have to step up and Castres will be tricky."
The Sale and England prop Andrew Sheridan has released an album on iTunes of 16 songs he has written. "I recorded it at a studio in Manchester and when I played it to friends, they persuaded me to make it available," Sheridan said. Its title could be a reference to the England side he hopes to return to next month after missing last season through injury: Where We Go From Here.
