Saints turn to Fulton

The 27-year-old has previous Zurich Premiership experience, as he played for NEC Harlequins in the 2003/04 season following the tragic death of Nick Duncombe.

Fulton, whose real first name is Andrew and has played for the New Zealand Maoris, has played Super 12 rugby for the Highlanders and Auckland Blues and has also played for Canterbury and Wellington in New Zealand's NPC league.

He said today: "I turned down a New Zealand contract because that ties you in for 12 months and I really wanted to go overseas. If I had played in the NPC, the Zurich Premiership and Heineken Cup would have been well underway by the time it had ended. I really wanted an opportunity to play somewhere up here."

Saints operations director John Steele said: "We are very fortunate that a quality player such as Billy was available to us at short notice. He has valuable experience in both Super 12 and the Zurich Premiership and it will be an interesting tussle for the number nine shirt."

Robinson will be out of action for the rest of the season after being banned for 14 weeks for stamping, Saints has two other scrum-halves, Johnny Howard, and the Academy's Ben Jones.