Club vs Country row set to rumble on
Christmas is coming, the 2021 Six Nations is scheduled to kick off in a little under seven weeks and, as it stands, Fabien Galthie does not know how many players he can select for the opening match against Italy in Rome.
Thirty-one or forty-two, that is the question. Or, possibly, a number somewhere in between.
Sorting it out, however, doesn’t look like it will be plain sailing. Galthie doesn’t know when he will be told how many players he can select – a meeting set for this past week between the LNR and FFR to start talking about the matter was called off at the request of the Union, who would prefer to discuss the matter with club presidents, individually.
So here we are. After the national side’s best year in a decade, French rugby politics is threatening to derail the whole thing just as it’s starting to build up a head of steam.
The FFR’s negotiating tactic, which sounds an awful lot like it could have been borrowed from Britain’s Brexit brinksman team, has been tried before, with about the same level of success as its apparent inspiration.
Bernard Laporte brusquely dismissed the LNR as a negotiator at the height of the row over player release for the autumn international period. “What is the LNR?” he said at the time. “I want to talk to Didier Lacroix, Thomas Lombard, Mohed Altrad and the other club presidents.”
That really didn’t go well. The clubs stuck to their LNR guns. France’s highest administrative court, the Conseil d’Etat, got involved and told the two sides to sort it out like grown-ups – and the FFR’s need for TV revenue was such that they were always most likely to give ground.
The result: Fabien Galthie was allowed to select just 31 players, had to work with a three-match-per-player limit, and was obliged to top-up his training camps with France 7s players, under-20s, and any free Pro D2 recruits he could find.
The clubs have, again, said that – as in October – they will only negotiate through the LNR. So, rather than 31 or 42, perhaps the question should really be: to meet, or not to meet?
Galthie, who stirred the pot just a little on live TV in the minutes after the Autumn Nations Cup final, is determined to keep his 42-player training squad numbers. FFR vice-president Serge Simon put on a confident face when he described himself as ‘optimistic’ that a long-standing deal would be agreed ‘before the end of the year’.
Word is the LNR may be willing to up the selection maximum from 31 to 35 or 36. The 31 figure was in an existing convention, but the clubs had approved a plan to release more players for the Six Nations in 2020.
This time, the FFR holds what could be one important card. The LNR has voted to delay its presidential elections again from March to July. It wants Paul Goze, whose second term is officially already in overtime, at the helm until the summer and hopefully the end of the current health crisis.
But that vote still needs to be ratified by the FFR, which would have to hold an extraordinary general meeting to do so. What are the chances, do you think, that it will become a bargaining chip in discussions between two sides that don’t altogether see eye to eye?
Next year’s planned rugby calendar – with Six Nations’ trips to Rome, London and Dublin, a July tour of Australia, and an autumn international programme featuring New Zealand and Argentina – is tough enough for nu-France. Old politics really aren’t helping.
Rather more heartening rugby news came from an unlikely source – Paris City Hall, which this week voted unanimously to name a sports venue in the city after former France international and Stade Francais legend Christophe Dominici.
Tributes in the debating chamber were led by former Stade Francais back row and teammate Pierre Rabadan who, after retiring in 2015, is now the mairie’s delegate for sport.
Brive, too, are remembering one of their former players. The South Stade at Stade Amedee Domenech will be renamed Tribune Roger Fite in honour of the former forward, who played in the 60s and 70s.
Elsewhere, Pau’s win over Worcester in the Challenge Cup last weekend was their first in seven matches – and their first under an interim coaching team that was rapidly put in place after Nicolas Godignon and Frédéric Manca were relieved of their duties, less than 20 months after they had taken over from Simon Mannix under similar strained circumstances.
Club president Bernard Pontneau this week said he was in no rush to find a permanent replacement – and that he was willing to look abroad for the right candidate. Therefore Thomas
Domingo, Geoffrey Lanne-Petit and Paul Tito will continue to run day-to-day team matters until the end of the season.
And, finally, a story perhaps worthy of an ‘and finally’ slot. Agen – another club that have replaced their coaching team already this season – this week lost forwards coach Jalil Narjissi after less than a month in the role.
In a statement released on Monday, the club said former team hooker Narjissi – a parttime firefighter – could not fulfil his club duties, study for the training licences he needed, and his role with the emergency services – to which he had committed until the end of the season. Pierre-Philippe Lafond, left, who was relieved of his duties at Montpellier soon after Olivier Azam arrived to bolster the coaching staff, is among those said to be in the running for the nowvacant post.
“Word is the LNR may be willing to up Galthie’s selection maximum to 35 or 36”