No, it’s not just the Six Nations Tournament in life. While the Blues have achieved the Grand Slam, and there are still five regular season days left in the Top 14, club presidents are accelerating to complete their squad for next season. Does this mean that rugby is in the midst of transfers? Officially, no. According to the National Rugby League, the transfer period extends over the months of May and June. Yet the movements and discussions take place over a much longer period. Dive into the heart of the French market for rugby players.
The name of Melvyn Jaminet has been coming up for more than a year among transfer rumours. The USAP player, who played in Pro D2 last season, exploded in the eyes of the general public last June. Holder with the XV of France in Australia, he shone, to seize, since, number 15 at the Blues. His Six Nations Tournament will not weaken the interest of the contenders. He is not the only one.
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In football, there are two transfer periods: from June to August, as well as the whole month of January. If French rugby officially has only one transfer window, from May to June, the reality is quite different. “Negotiations start quite early, around November”, asks Jean-François Fonteneau, president of SU Agen (Pro D2). For him, the mercato is not elsewhere “not really one”. The clubs are indeed on deck throughout the year to refine their workforce.
“A player under contract does not have the right to engage with another club more than one year before the end of his contract”, explains Clément Marienval, agent affiliated with the French Rugby Federation. The most trivial example would therefore be that the mutations only concern players at the end of their lease. But if the president of the LNR, René Bouscatel, said in the columns of the Figaro “against transfers”these movements are now legion.
Historically, the signing of Benjamin Fall from Bayonne to Racing 92, in 2010, marked a kind of turning point. Today we find order “from ten to twenty (transfers) per season”, according to this agent, for sums that can be counted in the hundreds of thousands of euros. It rarely reaches a million, even for the biggest stars.
These figures, even significant, remain very far from football. “But the clubs that release players for compensation do not do so against them”, continues Clément Marienval. The budgets of the biggest Top 14 teams may well exceed 30 million euros, but the follies are exceptional.
To build a workforce, it’s a constant job. “You have to make sure that all the contracts don’t expire at the same time. Ideally, everything is based on the duration of the manager’s contract”explains the president of Agen, Jean-François Fonteneau.
In addition, leaders must face two major constraints. On average over a season, 16 of the 23 players on a match sheet must come from French training (JIFF). Another obligation: the payroll of a club must not exceed, with exceptions, 10.9 million euros. This quota, which is much higher than the salary-cap English, allows French clubs to have a stranglehold on the biggest international stars.
But, it was revised downwards last season in an ever more open championship, where the numbers quickly reach around forty players to deal with injuries and other duplications.
Stade Toulousain reacts to the departure of Cheslin Kolbe.
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Despite everything, these transfers are sometimes made during the season. Toulon thus bought Cheslin Kolbe’s contract from Toulouse last August. That temporality accredits the thesis of a deregulated market over time, unlike football and its clearly established periods.
To make matters worse for the schmilblick, each team is entitled to two medical jokers and three additional players during a season. “It’s not very easy to manage, you have to find the right player and make him available at the right time”, admits the president of the SUA. The Lot-et-Garonne club, for example, enlisted five elements that helped it get out of a bad patch in Pro D2.
“I understand that it’s complicated to follow for the general public! But it’s the modernization of professional rugby that wants that.”
Clément Marienval, agent affiliated with the FFRfrance info: sports
Before embarking on a career as an agent, Marienval, 36 today, played as a three-quarter center in several French clubs. He therefore experienced the precariousness of an already very restricted environment in 2006. “I had signed very early in Lyon, then in Pro D2, from Brive. But they had a catastrophic season and saved themselves from a descent into Federal 1 on the wire. There, there was real stress”remembers the agent sixteen years later.
By sometimes committing a year in advance, it is difficult to guard against adverse sporting hazards. Certainly, clauses exist to release a player pre-hired with a relegated club. “But that, they don’t know until very late. And behind, they won’t necessarily have other opportunities”, he concludes. In a very limited market, places remain expensive.