After the pandemic: blood on the streets as a new-look future for French pro rugby emerges
While politicians and ordinary people grapple with the cold hard facts of the global health crisis, French professional rugby, like elsewhere, is now looking to a new reality beyond the acute financial pain of the coronavirus shutdown.
The immediate situation looks like this: All amateur competitions have ended for the season. France’s professional leagues have been suspended since March 13. A meeting of the LNR, scheduled for Tuesday, April 7, to decide the future of the current Top 14 and ProD2 seasons has been delayed until the end of the month.
“Faced with a complex and evolving situation, the Ligue Nationale de Rugby is giving itself time to reflect before taking, in consultation with the FFR, the first decisions related to the situation,” the LNR said in a statement.
While that decision has yet to be made. Bernard Laporte on Wednesday warned that, chances are, this season cannot be rescued.
Stopped after 17 rounds of the 29-weekend competition, French media report there are two favoured scenarios as the Top 14 tries to recoup some of the €100million it is expected to lose if the 2019/20 campaign is cancelled outright. It could maintain the current June 26 date for the final, with a shortened run-in; or move the final to July 18 – with the contractual issues that necessarily follow.
Those plans could be moot. As Robins Tchale-Watchou, president of players’ union Provale, said: “We have an unknown that complicates the various equations, which is how the health situation will evolve. Depending on when it ends, we may not be able to continue.
“Despite the goodwill of all the different actors, this unknown imposes itself on us.”
Tchale-Watchou’s ‘unknown’ will define everything the LNR decides for this season, and mch of what will happen for several years to come. Anyone expecting a rapid return to normality following the Covid-19 pandemic is fooling themselves. After this – whenever this ends – we will all have to adapt to a new normal. In rugby, as in real life.
For the former, cause and effect have already gone hand in hand. The virus has been the catalyst of a slamming halt in player recruitment in France’s top flight – as well as some serious rethinking of the future.
Things were already changing. The ever-evolving, ever-tightening JIFF regulations were already, slowly changing the face of French rugby. But Covid-19 has done in a matter of weeks what it took the JIFF regulations 10 years to achieve.
From next season, established Top 14 teams can have 14 non-JIFF players on their books, including any emergency short-term ‘medical jokers’. They must also average 16 JIFF-qualified players in their matchday squads across the season.
For financial reasons, clubs were looking to and investing in their academies. Toulon have made a big show about their new-build set-up at Berg, and their newly discovered quest for local talent. Ugo Mola’s Toulouse rebuilt from the youth up after Didier Lacroix took over the presidency and plugged a gaping hole in the club’s finances.
Look, too, at the crop of recent under-20 players with extensive top-level experience thanks, in part, to a coherent pathway put in place by France U20 coach Sebastien Piqueronies.
New compensation rules also mean clubs are repaid for the commitment and money they have spent developing young players who then sign their first professional contract for another side.
But it is Covid-19, its subsequent lockdown and the instantaneous drying-up of club income, rather than the slower processes already in place, that have combined to bring the entire overseas hiring process to a halt.
“Everybody has put an absolute brake on recruitment, on spending,” Brive President Simon Gillham told The Rugby Paper this week. “Everyone’s cutting back. Clubs are looking at young players in the academies, and saying, ‘how can we make do with those?’.
“Now is not the moment for shipping in expensive marquee players,” Gillham added. “There’s going to be a lot more focus on ‘local’ – locally produced, homegrown. We’re all going to have to sit down and say, ‘okay how do we reconfigure this?’.”
He is not the first club president to sound the alarm on French rugby’s finances. Even those with the deepest pockets have voiced their concern. “I can’t think of any other economy more fragile and uncertain than ours,” Montpellier’s Mohed Altrad told L’Equipe. “The balance between income and expenditure is in deficit, and we cannot live forever at a loss.”
Meanwhile, in an interview with Le Figaro, Thomas Lombard, managing director of Stade Francais, said: “The economic model of rugby is on the verge of faltering because of this crisis. We have probably gone too far – and I include my club in this. The urgent question today is how the clubs will survive.”
His living-beyond-our-means comments echoed those of a former Stade president, Thomas Savare, who sold the Paris outfit to Capri-Sun King Hans-Peter Wild after the failed merger with Racing 92.
Clermont’s Eric de Cromieres, meanwhile, revealed the club loses about €800,000 for every home game it doesn’t play. With five home games between the start of the league’s suspension and the end of the 26-week regular season, the club could be out of pocket to the tune of €4million just from that stream alone.
Gillham is at least optimistic. “It’s not as bad as some people make out. The club owners and presidents – we’ve been talking to each other an awful lot over the last few days – are incredibly responsible people with an absolute passion for the game.
Most of Sale's Boks are in SA.
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“There are virtually 30 clubs like that. They’re acting responsibly. But there will be a change. There’ll be a lot of players on the market. They’ll be looking again at people’s salaries. People will look at things differently.”
Some of his predicted effects can be seen already. Incoming recruitment has stopped as clubs tighten their belts.
Kurtley Beale, who is heading to Racing 92 on a reported €400,000-a-year deal, is a rare big-name signing from outside France next season. That sum is much lower than the €1.2million the club paid Dan Carter a year, or the €600,000 Bordeaux have forked out for Semi Radradra’s defence-cutting services for two seasons.
Meanwhile Lyon’s outgoing number 8 Carl Fearns has already spoken about the fast-evaporating interest from clubs in the wake of the virus outbreak.
“It’s frustrating because the market is collapsing and I find myself in a difficult position,” he recently told The Rugby Paper. “Clubs are no longer talking about contracts and new signings.”
Fearns, who admitted he is considering the prospect of premature retirement if he comes to the end of his contract with Lyon in June with no place to go, is not alone. All Black Colin Slade, who joined Pau after the 2015 World Cup in England, has not been offered a new contract. There is no news on where the 32-year-old may end up.
Other big names out of contract at the end of the season include Dominic Bird, Donnacha Ryan, Ben Volavola, Sergio Parisse, Mamuka Gorgodze, Liam Messam, Nick Abendanon, and Greig Laidlaw.
It’s not just overseas stars seeking a new home. As it stands, experienced French players Benjamin Fall, Marc Andreu, Alexis Palison, Hugo Bonneval, Remy Grosso and Maxime Mermoz will find themselves out of work when their current contracts expire on June 30. Andreu and Grosso have both admitted retirement is not far from their thoughts.
With rugby rapidly rethinking its finances, player salaries are a prime target.
It means big-money players, used to marquee prices, are set to find their transfer market bargaining power greatly reduced, and those with JIFF status will be at an advantage. With clubs putting a freeze on recruitment during the Covid-19 crisis, supply looks set to exceed demand once the market finally reopens.
Between 2008 and 2018, according to the most recent report by the sport’s financial watchdog, the DNACG, the “average gross player payroll per club” jumped from €5.4million to €9.6million. Last season, they accounted for more than half of clubs’ operating expenses.
Revenues – including TV rights – have also increased, but more slowly.
Some clubs – Montpellier, Stade Francais, Racing 92, and Lyon – have a mega-rich patron to make up any shortfall. Others are company backed, such as Castres, and – to a certain extent – Clermont. Some rely more heavily than most on filling their stadiums – Toulouse, Bordeaux and La Rochelle fall into this category.
But, sooner rather than later, and as Toulon are already doing, clubs will have to change their model to fit their new circumstances. There will be fewer big-name stars chewing up the salary cap and a greater emphasis on younger, cheaper, French players.
As Tchale-Watchou said: “There was a before, and there will be an after.” After Covid-19, French rugby will have to review its lifestyle and cut down on the big salary, big name carbs.
The focus then shifts to other issues. The current TV deal – worth €97million a year – lasts until 2023. Relations between the league and pay-TV broadcaster Canal Plus are strong, but will the post-2019/20 French rugby product generate another big-money agreement? Will the fans approve of the changes? How will the new-look domestic landscape affect the national team, which was threatening to wake up again after a decade of slumber?
More questions, then. Few answers. Uncertainty is the only certainty in a post-Covid rugby nation.
Comments on RugbyPass
🤦♂️🤣 who cares who’s the best . All I know is the All Blacks have the star coach but have few star players now …
27 Go to commentsJe suis sûr que Farrell est impatient de jouer avec Lopez et Machenaud et d’être entraîné par Collazo… 🤭
1 Go to commentsAn on field red (aka a full red) in SRP must surely carry a bigger suspension than a red card given by the bunker as that carries a 20 minute team punishment. Had Damon Murphy abdicated his responsibility as a ref and issued both Drua players a yellow, which would have been upgraded to a 20 minute red by the bunker, that would have killed Australia and New Zealand’s push for the 20 minute red to be trialled globally from July this year.
11 Go to commentsEver so often you all post a Danny Care story that isn’t the announcement that he has finally re-signed for one more, victory tour season at Quins and I’m just like, “well you fooled me again!” My absolute favorite player ever, we need to make his final year at the Stoop (and Twickers) official already. I know he supposedly snubbed France but I won’t feel better until he signs.
1 Go to commentslate hit what late hit it wasn’t at all late and can clearly see he was committed before the tackle
1 Go to commentsChristian Lio -Willies 2 try perfomance was a standout. As was captain Scott Barrett. Up front was where the boys won it.They are a great team and players. Fantastic Crusades , you can keep going.
1 Go to commentsI don't know how the locals feel about that? I guess if you call yourselves the Worcester Wasps that might be appease. But really we need more teams in the Premiership in my view so they are not padding it out as they are at the moment. It might curtail so many players going abroad as well
5 Go to commentsNZ 😭😭😭is certainly rivaling England for best whingers cup!😭😭😭 !!!
27 Go to commentsYup. New Zealand won 3 out of 10 world cups played. SA 4 out of 8 attempts 30 Vs 50 per cent.🤔🤔
27 Go to commentsShould've done this years ago. Change Saturday kick off times to around 11am. Up and off and back home before 3pm, limit travel time too. Allows players to actually do something else with their Saturday that's family oriented or being rugby fans they could ‘watch’ pro rugby. Increases crowds etc. How can anyone that enjoys grassroots and pro rugby have to choose between the two on Saturdays?
9 Go to commentsI bet he inspired those supporters just as much.
1 Go to commentsBen Smith Springboks living rent free in his head 😊😂
67 Go to commentsGood to hear he would like to play the game at the highest level, I hadn’t been to sure how much of a motivator that was before now. Sadly he’s probably chosen the rugby club to go to. Try not to worry about all the input about how you should play rugby Joey and just try to emulate what you do on the league field and have fun. You’ll limit your game too much (well not really because he’s a standard athlete like SBW and he’ll still have enough) if you’re trying to make sure you can recycle the ball back etc. On the other hard, you can totally just try and recycle by looking to offload any and everywhere if you’re going to ground 😋
1 Go to commentsThis just proves that theres always a stat and a metric to use to justify your abilities and your success. Ben did it last week by creating an imaginary competition and now you did the same to counter his argument and espouse a new yardstick for success. Why not just use the current one and lets say the Boks have won 4 world cups making them the most successful world cup team. Outside of the world cup the All Blacks are the most successful team winning countless rugby championships and dominating the rankings with high win percentages. Over the last 4 years statistically the Irish are the best having the highest win rate and also having positive records against every tier 1 side. The most successful Northern team in the game has been England with a world cup title and the most six nations titles in history. The AB’s are the most dominant team in history with the highest win rate and 3 world cups. Lets not try to reinvent the wheel. Just be honest about the actual stats and what each team has been good at doing and that will be enough to define their level of success.
27 Go to commentsHow is 7’s played there? I’m surprised 10 or 11 man rugby hasn’t taken off. 7 just doesn’t fit the 15s dynamics (rules n field etc) but these other versions do.
9 Go to commentsPick Swinton at your peril A liability just like JWH from the Roosters Skelton ??? went missing at RWC
14 Go to commentsLike tennis, who have a ranking system, and I believe rugby too, just measure over each period preceding a world cup event who was the longest number one and that would be it. In tennis the number one player frequently is not the grand slam winner. I love and adore the All Blacks since the days of Ian Kirkpatrick when I was a kid in SA. And still do because they are the masters of running rugby and are gentleman on and off the field - in general. And in my opinion they have been the majority of the time the best rugby team in the world.
27 Go to commentsHaving overseas possessions in 2024 is absurd. These Frenchies should have to give the New Caledonians their freedom.
21 Go to commentsBell injured his foot didn’t he? Bring Tupou in he’ll deliver when it counts. Agree mostly but I would switch in the Reds number 8 Harry Wilson for Swinton and move Rob Valentini to 6 instead. Wilson is a clever player who reads the play, you can’t outmuscle the AB’s and Springboks, if you have any chance it’s by playing clever. Same goes for Paisami, he’s a little guy who doesn’t really trouble the likes of De Allende and Jordie Barrett. I’d rather play Carter Gordon at 12 and put Michael Lynagh’s boy at 10. That way you get a BMT type goalkicker at 10 and a playmaker at 12. Anyways, just my two cents as a Bok supporter.
14 Go to commentsThanks Brett, love your articles which are alway pertinent. It’s a difficult topic trying to have a panel adjudicating consistently penalties for red card issues. Many of the mitigating reasons raised are judged subjectively, hence the different outcomes. How to take away subjective opinions?
11 Go to comments