Premiership giants plotting to lure Franco Smith away from URC champs

He has never even reached a RWC semi-final let alone won a Rugby World Cup which is a must to be considered the greatest rugby player of all time (in professional era). In fact he hasn’t won anything in XVs at test level other than a single Six Nations.

Greatest club player of all time perhaps. But at test level, he joked at home in Paris in 2023 and he choked in Tokyo in 2019. Facts.

You are, like many people who can barely read on this website, arguing a point I am not trying to make.

If you are trying to work out where he fits in the Pantheon of all time greats you have to take into account what he achieved and against who.

He very rarely plays the top teams in the world - once or twice per year maximum. He hasn't played anyone good other than Ireland outside France, and when he has France have only won 1 game. When he does play against Ireland, SA, and NZ he looks like a very good rugby player rather than the god he does in the Top 14 or against Wales as reflected in France's results vs. those teams when he has played.

And yes a 2 or 3 test tour of SA would be the ultimate test outside World Cups. Through no fault of his own he will never face this test.

Let's see how you feel when the SH chooses to send B teams to France in November! Boot on t'other foot then😁

If you make the pact you have to pay the price. Lesson of Faust.

Hopefully the Nations League, if successful, will dam the tide.

It's fine but you cannot have your cake and eat it, esp after the national side had been spefically engineered to win the RWC in 2023 at home, not in 2027 in Aussie.

And get away with it because they tail doesn't wag the dog.

That's exactly what happens. Woodward had the same problem with the English clubs back in the early noughties. He forced their cooperation before the 2003 RWC but he paid the ultimate price for it in 2004. One club owner actually said, 'Now it's our turn' - Woodward resigned and all the benefits of the 2003 triumph were lost to the game as a whole in England. The tail wagged the dog.

I don't think THIS team is like any french team I've ever seen before.

Just naive. Until you win away in places like SA and NZ nobody really takes any notice of pure NH success [ask Gatland]. The club game will have to give ground before it ever happens, and they ain't about to do it. Period.