French bread: European clubs lure Premiership players

The upper crust of English rugby are being buttered up to join clubs across the Channel and even Jonny Wilkinson may join them, writes Chris Hewett

(Getty)

Events usually move too fast for the liking of the Rugby Football Union’s management board, so when it meets a week today to ponder the imminent departures of three England internationals to France – both James Haskell and Tom Palmer will be playing in Paris with Stade Français next season while Riki Flutey is moving to Brive – it may conceivably find itself discussing a mere 50 per cent of the problem. Another trio of capped players is being linked, ever more publicly, with moves across the Channel: Iain Balshaw of Gloucester, Shaun Perry of Bristol and – horror of horrors – Jonny Wilkinson of Newcastle and the world. Tell us it ain’t so, Jonny.

Members of the Wilkinson circle, not a million miles away from his immediate family, have been telling us for quite a while now, and they remain adamant, that no discussions have taken place between the most celebrated outside-half in the history of European rugby and the French capital’s second-most ambitious rugby-loving squillionaire, the real estate magnate Jacky Lorenzetti.

But Lorenzetti, utterly determined to do for Racing Metro what Max Guazzini has so flamboyantly done at neighbouring Stade Français, is now on record as saying he wants Wilkinson, pretty much at any price. With sterling plummeting against the euro, it is enough to test the loyalty of a saint.

Racing Metro are a second-tier outfit at present, but they are 10 points clear in the race for promotion to the elite Top 14 competition and once they get themselves up there plan on staying. Balshaw, a first-choice back when Brian Ashton was in charge of the England side but not rated by the current manager Martin Johnson, is said to have agreed terms already and should Lorenzetti end up with both men on his books, he will at least be able to look Guazzini in the eye without blinking.

There was a good deal of alarm running through the English game yesterday after Wasps, high achievers but low payers, acknowledged defeat in their fight to retain the services of Haskell, Palmer and Flutey. All three are members of the 32-strong Test squad, and while Palmer’s injury problems will prevent him participating in the current Six Nations Championship, his colleagues are both first-choicers. Haskell, in particular, has put the cat among the pigeons, for at 23, he is one of Johnson’s so-called “core” players for the 2011 World Cup in New Zealand.

Martyn Thomas, chairman of the governing body, expressed his concern at the potential consequences for the eight-year deal between Twickenham and the Premiership clubs, under which the union pays the best part of £5m a year for 14 weeks of unfettered access to international players.

According to Haskell, the small print of his deal with Stade Français guarantees his release for England squad gatherings, but RFU sources expressed fears that he might not be available for summer tour duty if his club reached the French Championship final, which is played in June. As Stade Français have signed him with precisely that aim in mind, there could be real fun and games 16 months from now.

In addition, Thomas has long been critical of the clubs’ controversial policy of “revenue smoothing” – a financial equalisation mechanism under which teams producing England personnel effectively hand over money to those who do not – and is even more wound up about it now that a productive side like Wasps are finding it so difficult to stay competitive in the market place. This particular corner of rugby’s political minefield will be thoroughly stomped over at next week’s meeting.

Meanwhile, the Wasps executive chairman Mark Rigby – a tough-as-old-boots flanker in the amateur days – rolled up his sleeves in time-|honoured fashion yesterday and got stuck in. “It raises great concern that French clubs can now blow English clubs away when it comes to salaries and it is clear that in financial terms we are no longer on a level playing field,” he said. “There is a wider concern that the development of English rugby players will only be hampered as they move away from the Premiership, which is the best domestic league in the northern hemisphere.”

Unsurprisingly, Haskell begged to differ with one or two of those sentiments, insisting that money was the last of his considerations. Rather, he described his move as an honest attempt to improve his act by playing outside his “comfort zone” alongside the likes of the Italian back-row forwards Sergio Parisse and Mauro Bergamasco, who are counted among the finest players of their kind in the sport.

But nothing Haskell said could conceal the fact that, in Paris, he will earn twice as much as he could have hoped to earn in London. England’s leading clubs are subject to a strict salary cap of £4m, while in France, there is no salary cap worthy of the name. The major teams across the water can spend 55 per cent of their turnover on players’ salaries – a generous figure that allows the likes of Stade Français, Toulouse and |Perpignan to throw upwards €20m (£17.7m) at their squads. What is more, most of the top sides play in publicly owned stadiums, which spares them a good deal of financial pain. When it comes to economic muscle, they have the English beaten all ends up. “We can’t compete,” admitted Ian McGeechan, the Wasps director of rugby. “There is far more money in France.”

Naturally, there will not be a scintilla of sympathy for the Premiership fraternity from any other part of Planet Rugby. The New Zealanders may have lost their 2007 World Cup half-backs, Daniel Carter and Byron Kelleher, to France, but they have been angrier for longer with the English, who lured the brilliant Andrew Blowers away from the All Blacks almost a decade ago and have been waving money at his successors ever since. Australia and South Africa have also had their issues with clubs in this part of the world, and it has to be said that there are almost as many top-drawer Frenchmen in this season’s Premiership as there are Englishmen in the Top 14. Indeed, half the teams in the elite league across the water have no English players at all, and six others have only one.

Is this, then, really the start of a debilitating period for the game here, driven by a credit crunch that does not appear to be crunching the French? Mark McCafferty, the chief executive of Premier Rugby, the clubs’ umbrella organisation, does not think so. “It will be a trickle,” he predicted yesterday, “because the French themselves are very worried about the number of foreign players in their league. I don’t think the strong euro–no salary cap situation is going to last for ever; you may see the French clubs seriously considering a cap as the economy gets more and more difficult for them.”

McCafferty is probably right. The majority of those either committed to a French interlude or toying with the idea of one are of no immediate interest to Johnson: even Palmer, seen as the lock most likely to this time last year, has been knocked down the red-rose pecking order by Nick Kennedy. England are interested in Flutey at the moment, but that interest may not extend as far as the next World Cup. As for Wilkinson, who knows? If he does agree to a couple of years in Paris, it would be just like him to trip over the Eiffel Tower and break his leg.

However, the governing body is definitely alarmed by Haskell, in whom much time and effort have been invested, and may well play hardball with him.

Whoever ends up being charged with that task it would be best if it were not Rob Andrew, the director of elite rugby at Twickenham. Sixteen years ago, he was picked by England while playing club rugby – for Toulouse.

Exiles: Probable, potential and past England players in France

The live contenders

Of the 11 Englishmen currently playing serious championship rugby in France, only Andy Goode of Brive is in the red-rose mix. However, the “Wasps Three” - Riki Flutey, Tom Palmer and James Haskell – are all part of Martin Johnson’s elite squad and will press for inclusion from across the Channel next season. Theoretically, at least.

The once-upon-a-timers

Brive, by far the most Anglo-centric of the leading French clubs, have two World Cup-winning Englishmen on their books in Ben Cohen and Steve Thompson, plus a third capped red-roser in the former Saracens centre Ben Johnston. Not one of them is holding his breath in anticipation of further Test recognition. The same goes for the Castres centre Phil Christophers, the Montpellier midfielder Ollie Smith, the Perpignan prop Perry Freshwater and the Biarritz flanker Magnus Lund, although a plague of injuries could open the door a fraction for the latter pair.

The journeymen

Nick Adams, who played in the front row at Wasps last season, is now earning his corn at Montauban, while the one-time Northampton scrum-half Johnny Howard is at Bayonne. Neither has been capped; neither expects to be. The last and least talked about of the Brive contingent is Simon Hughes, a prop who, at 22, is plenty young enough to work his way up the ladder. Always assuming, of course, that someone at Twickenham knows he exists.