Top 14 club coaches are used to having to be inventive to line up their teams weekend after weekend. Between French championship and European Cup fixtures – and, incidentally, rest periods – the calendar is copious, even indigestible when you add a few final phase dates and the unavailability of the French national team for the Six Nations Tournament and test matches. But this season, with the World Cup on the horizon, the coach's headache has become almost mission impossible to get rid of.
First up are the coaches of Bayonne and Toulouse, who opened the new Top 14 season on Friday, August 18, at the Jean Dauger stadium in Bayonne. Reigning French champions, the red-and-blacks have had to do without nine players present in the 42-strong Bleus squad preparing for the World Cup (which will be reduced to 33 on Monday, August 21, when the final list is announced), the absences of renowned players (Antoine Dupont, Thomas Ramos, Julien Marchand etc.), as well as those selected by other nations.
Although Stade Toulousain is the main supplier to the French national team, it is far from being the only club affected by this avalanche of empty dressing room chairs. Rugby club Toulonnais (RCT), for example, has been missing around 15 players since the start of summer preparations. "We've got a smaller squad, but we're not thinking about the players who aren't here. We're concentrating just as hard," said Pierre Mignoni, director of rugby at RCT. At La Rade [Toulon], one of the solutions found was the massive use of "World Cup Jokers."
French clubs are therefore entitled to recruit players whose contracts run until November 19, three weeks after the end of the World Cup. An interesting point for the teams: These temporary players' contracts do not count towards the salary cap – the maximum wage bill authorized each season, set at €10.7 million. Toulon has temporarily added four players to its ranks, including Welshman Alun Wyn Jones (158 caps) and Frenchman Noa Nakaitaci (15 caps).
"The aim wasn't to recruit for the sake of recruiting and take on guys all over the place, but to target the positions where we have needs. We were looking for players who would be effective immediately," said Mignoni. While these reinforcements are welcome – and almost all Top 14 clubs make use of them – they have only partly compensated for the difficulty faced by the staff, who have had to adapt their recruitment and preparation for a sprint of three championship days. The top flight will take a break at the beginning of September, to make way for the World Cup (from September 8 to October 28).
The championship will resume the day after the final. "The two-month break will be approached differently with three games lost or three games won," said Toulouse third-row Alban Placines at a press conference on Thursday. "So it's important to get ourselves in the right condition so that these two months aren't a period where we're just moping around, where we can't react. We can't afford to slip up before then." Especially as the Top 14 teams will not always benefit fully from the return of their troops. The international players will take advantage of a few weeks vacation at the end of their national team's tour.
Once the squad is finally complete, the coaches will have to make the most of it, because it won't last: The French internationals will return to Les Bleus at the beginning of 2024, to compete in the next Six Nations Tournament (from February 2 to March 16). In the meantime, clubs will have to play three doublons (weekends when the France squad matches and championship fixtures overlap.) The headache has only just begun for Top 14 coaches...
Translation of an original article published in French on lemonde.fr; the publisher may only be liable for the French version.