Published: Wednesday, 1st July, 2009 4:00pm

Irish confirm duo's departure

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LONDON Irish have confirmed that winger Dominic Shabbo and prop Tonga Lea'aetoa have both left the club.

Former England youth international, Shabbo, has left for Championship side London Welsh after spending much of last season out on loan.

While, as expected, Lea'aetoa has moved to French side Toulon.

The Top 14 club announced the signing on their website back in January, but until now Irish had not publicly confirmed the deal.

The versatile prop joined the Exiles in July 2006 and made 88 appearances for the club.

This brings the number of last year's first team squad departing to seven.

Previously the club confirmed that James Bailey (Lyon), Warren Fury (Wasps), Shane Geraghty (Northampton), James Hudson (Newcastle) and Richard Skuse (Saracens) had all departed.

Seven players have come into the squad, including the likes of Gloucester fly-half Ryan Lamb and Samoa captain George Stowers. And head coach Toby Booth is pleased with his dealings over the summer.

He said: "Recruitment is the most important element in maintaining success. We have continued to adopt a quality rather than a quantity approach as well as developing and rewarding our home grown talent.

"We"re committed as a club, and to our fans, to producing a competitive squad within wage cap constraints that can compete at the highest level.

"We"re looking forward with much anticipation to the new season to continue our improvement."

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