Over the past few years so often we have heard incredibly lazy and asinine arguments bemoaning the presence of foreign players in the Top 14 and used as a scapegoat for the national team's failings. The typical line of argument is one such as this from an article from New Zealand.
So many seem to get incredibly confused on this point. So often people, such as the author of this article on 1014 Rugby, conclude that there is lack of opportunity for French players based solely looking at percentages of players rather than the overall numbers.
Of the players who played for Top 14 clubs in the 2017/18 season, 58% were homegrown born or raised French players. That is indeed below the percentage (albeit not by nearly as much as some might suggest) of homegrown English players in the Premiership at 61%. Also below all the Pro14 nations who compete in the 6 Nations in Ireland (77%), Wales (79%), Scotland (59%), or Italy (68%).
That is not including eligible players who were grew up elsewhere though. If you adjust it to eligible players through heritage, which the Scottish teams have brought in a number of such as Nick Grigg, Ben Toolis, and Tommy Seymour. Along with the numerous players to have spent three seasons of residency, like newly called up Mike Rhodes in England or Alivereti Raka in France, the figures (which should be read as an approximate as not all player's full range of eligible countries is common knowledge) increase for each nation. France (65%), England (69%), Ireland (90%), Wales (88%), Scotland (78%), Italy (82%). Again the percentage in the Top 14 is lower, and considerably so in the case of the Pro14 nations.
However the obvious point a surprising amount of people for some reason seem so incapable of grasping is that France also has more teams plus more matches, and thus many more opportunities for players to play at an elite level than all those Pro14 nations have.
Looking at the Pro14 as a whole. Only 22% or 24% of the players involved were homegrown in Ireland or Wales, which is easily less than half the amount of homegrown French players in the Top 14, whilst only 9% of the players are homegrown in Scotland or Italy.
Indeed if you look at just the six French clubs in the Champions Cup last season. Those clubs between them had both more homegrown and eligible French players playing more matches, more starts, and more minutes compared to Irish players in Ireland or any of the other nations in the Pro14 did.
In fact even if you take just the top 5 placed sides in the Top 14 in 2017/18 still homegrown French players play more matches, and make more starts than homegrown players at Pro14 nations do. Whilst even if you were to isolate those with the lowest percentage of homegrown French players (Oyonnax and Montpellier), you would still only need 7 of those clubs with that amount of French players to surpass the amount of game time to Irish players in Ireland.
Overall a total of 405 homegrown French players played for Top 14 clubs in 2017/18, between them playing 6,060 matches, making 3,748 starts, and playing 301,785 minutes. That is comfortably more players and more time on the pitch than any other major professional league offers homegrown talent. To compare with others, 345 homegrown English players featured in the Premiership, 155 in Ireland, 172 in Wales, 61 in Scotland, 62 in Italy.
You can adjust that to eligible players, include players based in other nations, the amount of French players playing professional rugby is still clearly ahead by each measure.
Of course to add to this France also has Pro D2, which is easily the strongest and best supported professional second tier of any country involved in the 6 Nations, and with a further 16 professional teams offers even yet more opportunity for players to play professional rugby alongside various internationals from all over the world at a good level for a second division competition.
A player in France has more opportunity to be a professional rugby player at a high level without having to leave their home country compared to any other country in the world. It's not even close.
During the World Rugby U20 Championship semi final, I tweeted a comparison between the amount of senior rugby the victorious France team played compared to the rest of the field to show what a myth it is that they never get opportunity to play. This is further backed up by research on Allrugby.
You could do this by any measure. Amount of U21 players used, amount of U21 starts, amount of U21 minutes. In each case the Top 14 had more than the entire Pro14, let alone just each individual nation, and the same can be said for Super Rugby in the Southern Hemisphere too.
Also the Top 14 featured 36 U20 players, between them playing 8,823 minutes, and 23 of them collectively making the starting lineup 98 times. That is more than both Pro14 and Super Rugby. In fact it is virtually as many U20 starts and minutes as both those leagues with all their 29 teams put together.
In the Pro14 Ireland had just 6 U20 players feature in the Pro14 (5 of which were at Ulster), playing 599 minutes, and making only 5 starts between them. Italy had only 2 U20 players, who played 83 minutes and made just 1 start between them. In Super Rugby, New Zealand and South Africa both just had one U20 player each (Caleb Clarke and Damian Willemse) reach a starting lineup. A young player in the Top 14 or Premiership is statistically far more likely to get an opportunity to play more senior professional rugby earlier than in a place such as Ireland or South Africa.
It is remarkable how so many have been fooled into thinking young players in France get no opportunity, when the truth is the exact opposite. A young French player, if they are good enough, has more opportunity to play elite level professional rugby compared to anywhere else in the world.
However it is worth noting that simply fielding a young player should not be necessarily seen as automatically always a good thing, and successful development is a highly individual case by case process not simply a race to see who can chuck in the most young players the fastest. If you follow that logic to its conclusion you would just end up with a revolving door as the young players from two or three years ago get cast out for new ones, and in the process lose sight of the actual end goal of development which is for the players to have long successful careers.
To sum this up, if you were giving prizes for playing young players last season's champions would be the shambolic Dragons, who used 17 U21 players for 6,185 minutes, by some margin the most of any team and also far too many. Whereas Exeter by contrast used only 2 U21 players for only 48 minutes, which was one of the lowest totals of any club in Europe. Yet which of those two teams has the better track record in recent years of successfully bringing through young talent? To be a young player at Exeter, alongside many internationals and experienced pros with good competition for places and as part of a winning squad, is clearly a better environment to develop even if they may play more at the Dragons.
Contrary to the confusion and nonsense on this topic, it is also worth noting French rugby players in fact the most privileged in the world. Owing purely to the luck of where they were born, they have more opportunity than players from anywhere else in the world to play professional rugby at a high level and make a good living from it without ever having to move to a foreign country.
A young French Espoir who does not make the cut at a big team still has massive amounts of opportunity to make a successful career in professional rugby. In most other countries that is much more difficult.
Take a country like Ireland, which figures show has amongst the highest total of registered teenage players in the world (much more than the other European nations involved in the Pro14), along with offering a much more limited number of opportunities to play professional rugby in their home country. Leinster with a population and catchment area of 2.5 million (which for context is larger than the entirety of South Wales where all the Welsh regions are all based) must surely have one the largest player pools of local talent vying for Academy places of any domestic team in Europe.
A young player who fails to make the cut but still may be good enough for professional rugby like for example Aj MacGinty, who failed to make the Leinster Academy intake, is often likely to give up on professional rugby like he did travelling to the USA. Whilst Tadhg Beirne also said he nearly quit professional rugby when he was released in 2016, until receiving an unexpected opportunity at the Scarlets for who he has been a revelation over the past 18 months.
The equivalent player to that in France on the otherhand does not have to consider either quitting or even have to move abroad at all. Espoirs at big clubs who fail to make it in the senior team usually can still find plenty of opportunity to continue professional rugby careers at another side in Top 14 or Pro D2. If they are successful there is also far more potential than elsewhere for upward mobility both for clubs in Pro D2 to reach the elite, and for players from Pro D2 to win contracts in Top 14, as well as Fédérale 1 players to reach Pro D2.
An example of this amongst the current French team would be Kevin Gourdon, who couldn't reach the Clermont senior side and moved to Pro D2 in 2012 with La Rochelle and became part of a team that got promoted and reached the top of the regular season table in 2016/17. Or Adrien Pélissié who moved to Aurillac and earned his way to win a contract back up to the Top 14. Many others also start off their senior careers initially with smaller Pro D2 or Fédérale 1 clubs as well and work their way up to bigger clubs. The French squad right now has four players who came through the ranks at Massy, Maxime Machenaud and Benjamin Fall started at Bordeaux-Bègles when they were still in Pro D2, whilst Pierre Bourgarit started at Auch, Marco Tauleigne at Bourgoin, and Camille Lopez at Mauléon all in Fédérale 1.
There are even some in France such as Gabriel Lacroix who was let go by Toulouse Cadets at 17 and didn't make the Espoirs squad and yet was playing professional rugby for Albi in Pro D2 before the age of 20. That is only possible in France thanks to the number of professional clubs thus greater number of professional opportunities. For the equivalents of those players in Leinster who fail to make the Academy intake (which as former Leinster Academy manager Dan van Zyl has mentioned could come down to simply to later development or a totally subjective selection call), barring a highly unusual career path overseas like MacGinty, it is more than likely professional career hopes finished.
Also it is of course even harder still for players from Tier 2 nations. They have no choice but to leave their home country, and often at a young age, in order to pursue their dreams of making it as professional rugby players. None of the simple pathways to contracts exist as they do in Tier 1 countries, often they will have a hard task even to get noticed at all with few scouts watching, and it requires a punt on behalf of the club to sign a foreign player who arrives untested and inexperienced at that level.
French players are incredibly fortunate to have so many opportunities to make careers in professional rugby at a high level in their home country that others do not. Some of them don't even seem to realise just how lucky they are to be rugby players from France or what it would be like in other nations. Also just as a bonus to all this, French international players never have to leave their home country or effectively retire from international rugby to get paid their market value. A French player does not get put in the same position that players like Juan Imhoff or Rhys Webb are in right now.
It should be noted though that whilst that is better of course for the players to have such opportunity, and reduces chance for young talents slip through the net, there are also disadvantages to this as well. Namely the absence of such competition and maintaining the standard of their competitions to an elite level for all their leading players to play in. They did have a corrective to that though that added to the competition, albeit also one a persistent lobby has spent the past years trying to remove.
Unfortunately there has been a lobby against foreign players who have been very successful in managing to somehow in spite of the facts convincing a lot of people that French players, the most privileged in the world, get no opportunity to play and blame this for the national team's poor form in recent years.
Among those people who have lobbied against foreign players include failed coaches like Philippe Saint-André looking for excuses for his dismal time in charge. Or an entitled mediocrity like Benoît Guyot who can't handle the competition and whinged about it when he was released by La Rochelle. Or Union bosses whose real gripe with French rugby is the global inflation of wages and annoyance at losing their players. Or simply just people who simply look at percentages and are incapable of working out the full context, and lazily repeating what's just become a cliché.
Nevertheless that lobby won over the FFR and Bernard Laporte said he wants to reduce number of foreigners "drastically" and what is coming in as a solution to a non-existent problem is stricter application of JIFF regulations. Whilst previously there was a financial incentive to field an average of number of JIFF over the season, teams did not have to adhere to that, now though as of next season they have introduced points deductions to those who don't. They also plan on making that progressively stricter, so by the 2021/22 season the average JIFF over the season is stated to be 17.
This is a unnecessary response to the widespread ignorance that has been spread about French players not getting opportunities, and whilst it may be good news for the 300th best French player, it will not help the national team level players at all.
Already there is more than enough opportunity for French players good enough to play. If a French player is unable to find any opportunity at any one of 30 professional teams in Top 14 or Pro D2, then there is a strong probability that they were never likely to be good enough to reach international level.
If you take the case of Guyot for example. He is just an example of complete entitlement. There were 60 different homegrown French players who started at flanker in the Top 14 last season, and between them they wore the 6 or 7 jersey 596 times (64%) over the season. In his specific position that's way more starts in the Top 14 for French players in the Top 14 than English players in the Premiership who started at flanker 390 times (58%), and over three times more than Irish players whose provinces fielded homegrown flankers for 174 starts (73%).
None of the international level French players get "blocked". Mathieu Babillot and Wenceslas Lauret both played huge 1800+ minute seasons for their clubs and over 2000+ minute seasons in total with international rugby. Young talents like Sekou Macalou, Judicaël Cancoriet, or even the 19 year old Cameron Woki were also all among the 27 homegrown French flankers to play 1000+ minute domestic seasons. By comparison in Ireland there were just four homegrown flankers who did so, and England 12 (although 16 eligible). If anything some of those players perhaps playing too much, as opposed to being "blocked", had more of an effect on the national team.
What a player like Guyot (who in actual fact had 125 matches and 7 seasons worth of opportunity to play in the Top 14) wanted though is an entitlement to the continued privilege of being a professional rugby player. A pass to get by as a mediocrity without being subject to the competition. This is in reality all those restrictions will really do. Protect the wages of a 27 year old journeyman who is between maybe the 30th to 50th best French flanker and who is totally and utterly irrelevant to the national team.
That the added competition exposes players with an attitude like Guyot who complain there are players better than him, as opposed to those who the higher standard required incentivises to drive to improve themselves in order to compete with the best and actually may be of use for France at international level, is a huge point in favour of the overseas talent in the Top 14 not one to be used against it.
Overall though player restrictions will obviously have a negative effect on the standard and competitiveness of the league. The reduced pool for recruitment would see the gap between the big clubs and the smaller ones likely increase, and teams more likely to end up with a lesser player and have to pay more than the market rate for it through artificially inflated wages.
The losers are not just the clubs though, these stricter regulations obviously potentially will have a negative effect on overseas talent, and in particular those from Tier 2 nations.
Ultimately French domestic rugby is a land of opportunity not just for the French players, but any player no matter what age or nationality, who dreams of making it as a professional rugby player at a high level, and the rewards for those who succeed are also greater than anywhere else.
The impact of French rugby on the global spread of the sport has been significant, particularly for countries outside of the Anglosphere or Commonwealth. Nowhere else in the world can a player from almost anywhere, Uruguay or Georgia, Netherlands or Spain, or even recently Colombia or Hungary realistically have any hope of launching a professional rugby career barring rare exceptions. If it were not for French rugby Argentina would not have become a Tier 1 nation, nor would Fiji or Georgia have reached the same level they are at now.
French rugby has given opportunity to more players outside Tier 1 to play professional rugby at a high level than all the other major leagues in the world combined provided they are good enough. As of now this is still the case, as we've seen recently with the ambitious young upcoming generation of players from the Netherlands. It is France where most of them have managed to find an opportunity to test themselves and see whether they can succeed at the professional level.
When the effect of the proposed stricter regulation in the 2020's begins to be felt, it will be those sort of investments in unproven talent that will take the hit first. It will be the players like Zeno Kieft, who moved to France at 18 to pursue a professional career and eventually displaced Guyot at La Rochelle, who would lose their livelihood in order so it can be guaranteed for the 300th best Frenchman.
Last season in fact we saw an example of what those tighter JIFF restrictions could mean in practice. Apparently Gela Aprasidze impressed his coach Vern Cotter when he came into the senior team after injuries at scrum half, and might have played a couple more times than he did, but lost the opportunity to do so to a French player due to JIFF regulations (for zero benefit to the French national team or anybody except the opposition). It won't be experienced former Springboks like Ruan Pienaar who take the effects first, it will be the young players chasing a dream from places like Georgia.
The amount of opportunities France unlike anywhere else offers players from almost anywhere in the world, ought to be celebrated and defended more often by those who care about the global game against some of the lazy and ignorant attacks it faces. Not least because those attacks are now gradually starting to bear fruit for the coming years.
There is a risk that in a few years time we see more instances like that with Aprasidze getting robbed of opportunities not on the basis of merit, along with others simply not getting considered for contracts in the first place, and for those lucky enough to get an opportunity there would likely be greater pressure to give up their international careers in order to increase their value with fewer opportunities available. At the moment there is relatively little effect, but by the end of that proposed JIFF tightening France could no longer be quite the same land of opportunity and dreams for aspiring professional rugby players across the world it has been for most of the professional era.
That would be a big blow to the global game and could cut off the elite professional end of the sport almost completely to many players especially in continental Europe and outside the Anglosphere. In some cases these players do not have any realistic chance of reaching a RWC let alone challenge for the knockout stages. It is only club rugby that can offer an opportunity for a player from almost anywhere in the world to truly test themselves towards the top end of the game, contest for major trophies, and earn widespread recognition for their talent as well as decent money.
At least some of that opportunity is probably going to be lost thanks to what was always an entirely bogus narrative about French players getting no opportunity and foreigners being falsely scapegoated for the national team floundering. We will see how this plays out though in the future, but it's surely a concern for many players from countries like Georgia, Fiji, or aspiring Espoirs from the Netherlands that there is such a lobby opposed to them earning a living as professional rugby players.
"There are so many foreigners in the French Top 14 now that opportunities are becoming more and more limited for French players to play their way into contention for national honours".That gets repeated in similar articles time and time again. Yet that is and always has been a complete myth and simply couldn't be further from the truth. Using data on players game time from the excellent site Allrugby here is an attempt to insert a few facts into this debate.
More opportunities for professional rugby players from France than any other nation
So many seem to get incredibly confused on this point. So often people, such as the author of this article on 1014 Rugby, conclude that there is lack of opportunity for French players based solely looking at percentages of players rather than the overall numbers.Of the players who played for Top 14 clubs in the 2017/18 season, 58% were homegrown born or raised French players. That is indeed below the percentage (albeit not by nearly as much as some might suggest) of homegrown English players in the Premiership at 61%. Also below all the Pro14 nations who compete in the 6 Nations in Ireland (77%), Wales (79%), Scotland (59%), or Italy (68%).
That is not including eligible players who were grew up elsewhere though. If you adjust it to eligible players through heritage, which the Scottish teams have brought in a number of such as Nick Grigg, Ben Toolis, and Tommy Seymour. Along with the numerous players to have spent three seasons of residency, like newly called up Mike Rhodes in England or Alivereti Raka in France, the figures (which should be read as an approximate as not all player's full range of eligible countries is common knowledge) increase for each nation. France (65%), England (69%), Ireland (90%), Wales (88%), Scotland (78%), Italy (82%). Again the percentage in the Top 14 is lower, and considerably so in the case of the Pro14 nations.
However the obvious point a surprising amount of people for some reason seem so incapable of grasping is that France also has more teams plus more matches, and thus many more opportunities for players to play at an elite level than all those Pro14 nations have.
Looking at the Pro14 as a whole. Only 22% or 24% of the players involved were homegrown in Ireland or Wales, which is easily less than half the amount of homegrown French players in the Top 14, whilst only 9% of the players are homegrown in Scotland or Italy.
Indeed if you look at just the six French clubs in the Champions Cup last season. Those clubs between them had both more homegrown and eligible French players playing more matches, more starts, and more minutes compared to Irish players in Ireland or any of the other nations in the Pro14 did.
In fact even if you take just the top 5 placed sides in the Top 14 in 2017/18 still homegrown French players play more matches, and make more starts than homegrown players at Pro14 nations do. Whilst even if you were to isolate those with the lowest percentage of homegrown French players (Oyonnax and Montpellier), you would still only need 7 of those clubs with that amount of French players to surpass the amount of game time to Irish players in Ireland.
Overall a total of 405 homegrown French players played for Top 14 clubs in 2017/18, between them playing 6,060 matches, making 3,748 starts, and playing 301,785 minutes. That is comfortably more players and more time on the pitch than any other major professional league offers homegrown talent. To compare with others, 345 homegrown English players featured in the Premiership, 155 in Ireland, 172 in Wales, 61 in Scotland, 62 in Italy.
You can adjust that to eligible players, include players based in other nations, the amount of French players playing professional rugby is still clearly ahead by each measure.
A player in France has more opportunity to be a professional rugby player at a high level without having to leave their home country compared to any other country in the world. It's not even close.
Young players also receive more opportunity in France than anywhere else
During the World Rugby U20 Championship semi final, I tweeted a comparison between the amount of senior rugby the victorious France team played compared to the rest of the field to show what a myth it is that they never get opportunity to play. This is further backed up by research on Allrugby.
A total of 87 U21 players (born 1997 or after) featured for Top 14 clubs in the 2017/18 season. By comparison 47 U21 players played for Premiership clubs, 40 for Welsh regions, 18 for Irish provinces, 8 for Scottish teams, and 7 for Italian teams.Of the France U20 23 today 18 played senior pro rugby for their clubs this season, between them 175 matches, 81 starts, 7223 minutes. Easily the most of any side in the comp. By comparison NZ U20 had 11 who played ITM Cup rugby, between them 48 matches, 23 starts, 2219 minutes.— Tier 2 Rugby (@T2Rugby) June 12, 2018
You could do this by any measure. Amount of U21 players used, amount of U21 starts, amount of U21 minutes. In each case the Top 14 had more than the entire Pro14, let alone just each individual nation, and the same can be said for Super Rugby in the Southern Hemisphere too.
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| France's champion U20 team had played more minutes at senior level than any other team in the tournament |
Also the Top 14 featured 36 U20 players, between them playing 8,823 minutes, and 23 of them collectively making the starting lineup 98 times. That is more than both Pro14 and Super Rugby. In fact it is virtually as many U20 starts and minutes as both those leagues with all their 29 teams put together.
In the Pro14 Ireland had just 6 U20 players feature in the Pro14 (5 of which were at Ulster), playing 599 minutes, and making only 5 starts between them. Italy had only 2 U20 players, who played 83 minutes and made just 1 start between them. In Super Rugby, New Zealand and South Africa both just had one U20 player each (Caleb Clarke and Damian Willemse) reach a starting lineup. A young player in the Top 14 or Premiership is statistically far more likely to get an opportunity to play more senior professional rugby earlier than in a place such as Ireland or South Africa.
It is remarkable how so many have been fooled into thinking young players in France get no opportunity, when the truth is the exact opposite. A young French player, if they are good enough, has more opportunity to play elite level professional rugby compared to anywhere else in the world.
However it is worth noting that simply fielding a young player should not be necessarily seen as automatically always a good thing, and successful development is a highly individual case by case process not simply a race to see who can chuck in the most young players the fastest. If you follow that logic to its conclusion you would just end up with a revolving door as the young players from two or three years ago get cast out for new ones, and in the process lose sight of the actual end goal of development which is for the players to have long successful careers.
To sum this up, if you were giving prizes for playing young players last season's champions would be the shambolic Dragons, who used 17 U21 players for 6,185 minutes, by some margin the most of any team and also far too many. Whereas Exeter by contrast used only 2 U21 players for only 48 minutes, which was one of the lowest totals of any club in Europe. Yet which of those two teams has the better track record in recent years of successfully bringing through young talent? To be a young player at Exeter, alongside many internationals and experienced pros with good competition for places and as part of a winning squad, is clearly a better environment to develop even if they may play more at the Dragons.
French rugby players among the luckiest and most privileged in the world
Contrary to the confusion and nonsense on this topic, it is also worth noting French rugby players in fact the most privileged in the world. Owing purely to the luck of where they were born, they have more opportunity than players from anywhere else in the world to play professional rugby at a high level and make a good living from it without ever having to move to a foreign country.
A young French Espoir who does not make the cut at a big team still has massive amounts of opportunity to make a successful career in professional rugby. In most other countries that is much more difficult.
Take a country like Ireland, which figures show has amongst the highest total of registered teenage players in the world (much more than the other European nations involved in the Pro14), along with offering a much more limited number of opportunities to play professional rugby in their home country. Leinster with a population and catchment area of 2.5 million (which for context is larger than the entirety of South Wales where all the Welsh regions are all based) must surely have one the largest player pools of local talent vying for Academy places of any domestic team in Europe.
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| Tadhg Beirne said he nearly quit pro rugby after being released by Leinster |
A young player who fails to make the cut but still may be good enough for professional rugby like for example Aj MacGinty, who failed to make the Leinster Academy intake, is often likely to give up on professional rugby like he did travelling to the USA. Whilst Tadhg Beirne also said he nearly quit professional rugby when he was released in 2016, until receiving an unexpected opportunity at the Scarlets for who he has been a revelation over the past 18 months.
The equivalent player to that in France on the otherhand does not have to consider either quitting or even have to move abroad at all. Espoirs at big clubs who fail to make it in the senior team usually can still find plenty of opportunity to continue professional rugby careers at another side in Top 14 or Pro D2. If they are successful there is also far more potential than elsewhere for upward mobility both for clubs in Pro D2 to reach the elite, and for players from Pro D2 to win contracts in Top 14, as well as Fédérale 1 players to reach Pro D2.
An example of this amongst the current French team would be Kevin Gourdon, who couldn't reach the Clermont senior side and moved to Pro D2 in 2012 with La Rochelle and became part of a team that got promoted and reached the top of the regular season table in 2016/17. Or Adrien Pélissié who moved to Aurillac and earned his way to win a contract back up to the Top 14. Many others also start off their senior careers initially with smaller Pro D2 or Fédérale 1 clubs as well and work their way up to bigger clubs. The French squad right now has four players who came through the ranks at Massy, Maxime Machenaud and Benjamin Fall started at Bordeaux-Bègles when they were still in Pro D2, whilst Pierre Bourgarit started at Auch, Marco Tauleigne at Bourgoin, and Camille Lopez at Mauléon all in Fédérale 1.
There are even some in France such as Gabriel Lacroix who was let go by Toulouse Cadets at 17 and didn't make the Espoirs squad and yet was playing professional rugby for Albi in Pro D2 before the age of 20. That is only possible in France thanks to the number of professional clubs thus greater number of professional opportunities. For the equivalents of those players in Leinster who fail to make the Academy intake (which as former Leinster Academy manager Dan van Zyl has mentioned could come down to simply to later development or a totally subjective selection call), barring a highly unusual career path overseas like MacGinty, it is more than likely professional career hopes finished.
Also it is of course even harder still for players from Tier 2 nations. They have no choice but to leave their home country, and often at a young age, in order to pursue their dreams of making it as professional rugby players. None of the simple pathways to contracts exist as they do in Tier 1 countries, often they will have a hard task even to get noticed at all with few scouts watching, and it requires a punt on behalf of the club to sign a foreign player who arrives untested and inexperienced at that level.
French players are incredibly fortunate to have so many opportunities to make careers in professional rugby at a high level in their home country that others do not. Some of them don't even seem to realise just how lucky they are to be rugby players from France or what it would be like in other nations. Also just as a bonus to all this, French international players never have to leave their home country or effectively retire from international rugby to get paid their market value. A French player does not get put in the same position that players like Juan Imhoff or Rhys Webb are in right now.
It should be noted though that whilst that is better of course for the players to have such opportunity, and reduces chance for young talents slip through the net, there are also disadvantages to this as well. Namely the absence of such competition and maintaining the standard of their competitions to an elite level for all their leading players to play in. They did have a corrective to that though that added to the competition, albeit also one a persistent lobby has spent the past years trying to remove.
The only winner from stricter JIFF regulations is mediocrity
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| Philippe Saint-André has used foreign players as an excuse for his utterly dismal failure as a coach |
Unfortunately there has been a lobby against foreign players who have been very successful in managing to somehow in spite of the facts convincing a lot of people that French players, the most privileged in the world, get no opportunity to play and blame this for the national team's poor form in recent years.
Among those people who have lobbied against foreign players include failed coaches like Philippe Saint-André looking for excuses for his dismal time in charge. Or an entitled mediocrity like Benoît Guyot who can't handle the competition and whinged about it when he was released by La Rochelle. Or Union bosses whose real gripe with French rugby is the global inflation of wages and annoyance at losing their players. Or simply just people who simply look at percentages and are incapable of working out the full context, and lazily repeating what's just become a cliché.
Nevertheless that lobby won over the FFR and Bernard Laporte said he wants to reduce number of foreigners "drastically" and what is coming in as a solution to a non-existent problem is stricter application of JIFF regulations. Whilst previously there was a financial incentive to field an average of number of JIFF over the season, teams did not have to adhere to that, now though as of next season they have introduced points deductions to those who don't. They also plan on making that progressively stricter, so by the 2021/22 season the average JIFF over the season is stated to be 17.
This is a unnecessary response to the widespread ignorance that has been spread about French players not getting opportunities, and whilst it may be good news for the 300th best French player, it will not help the national team level players at all.
Already there is more than enough opportunity for French players good enough to play. If a French player is unable to find any opportunity at any one of 30 professional teams in Top 14 or Pro D2, then there is a strong probability that they were never likely to be good enough to reach international level.
If you take the case of Guyot for example. He is just an example of complete entitlement. There were 60 different homegrown French players who started at flanker in the Top 14 last season, and between them they wore the 6 or 7 jersey 596 times (64%) over the season. In his specific position that's way more starts in the Top 14 for French players in the Top 14 than English players in the Premiership who started at flanker 390 times (58%), and over three times more than Irish players whose provinces fielded homegrown flankers for 174 starts (73%).
None of the international level French players get "blocked". Mathieu Babillot and Wenceslas Lauret both played huge 1800+ minute seasons for their clubs and over 2000+ minute seasons in total with international rugby. Young talents like Sekou Macalou, Judicaël Cancoriet, or even the 19 year old Cameron Woki were also all among the 27 homegrown French flankers to play 1000+ minute domestic seasons. By comparison in Ireland there were just four homegrown flankers who did so, and England 12 (although 16 eligible). If anything some of those players perhaps playing too much, as opposed to being "blocked", had more of an effect on the national team.
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| Benoît Guyot whined at losing his place to foreigners after getting released by La Rochelle in 2016 |
What a player like Guyot (who in actual fact had 125 matches and 7 seasons worth of opportunity to play in the Top 14) wanted though is an entitlement to the continued privilege of being a professional rugby player. A pass to get by as a mediocrity without being subject to the competition. This is in reality all those restrictions will really do. Protect the wages of a 27 year old journeyman who is between maybe the 30th to 50th best French flanker and who is totally and utterly irrelevant to the national team.
That the added competition exposes players with an attitude like Guyot who complain there are players better than him, as opposed to those who the higher standard required incentivises to drive to improve themselves in order to compete with the best and actually may be of use for France at international level, is a huge point in favour of the overseas talent in the Top 14 not one to be used against it.
Overall though player restrictions will obviously have a negative effect on the standard and competitiveness of the league. The reduced pool for recruitment would see the gap between the big clubs and the smaller ones likely increase, and teams more likely to end up with a lesser player and have to pay more than the market rate for it through artificially inflated wages.
The losers are not just the clubs though, these stricter regulations obviously potentially will have a negative effect on overseas talent, and in particular those from Tier 2 nations.
France remains rugby's land of opportunity ... but will it continue to be?
Ultimately French domestic rugby is a land of opportunity not just for the French players, but any player no matter what age or nationality, who dreams of making it as a professional rugby player at a high level, and the rewards for those who succeed are also greater than anywhere else.
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| In no other country apart from France could Andrés Zafra have made history for Colombian rugby as their first player to play professional rugby at an elite level |
The impact of French rugby on the global spread of the sport has been significant, particularly for countries outside of the Anglosphere or Commonwealth. Nowhere else in the world can a player from almost anywhere, Uruguay or Georgia, Netherlands or Spain, or even recently Colombia or Hungary realistically have any hope of launching a professional rugby career barring rare exceptions. If it were not for French rugby Argentina would not have become a Tier 1 nation, nor would Fiji or Georgia have reached the same level they are at now.
French rugby has given opportunity to more players outside Tier 1 to play professional rugby at a high level than all the other major leagues in the world combined provided they are good enough. As of now this is still the case, as we've seen recently with the ambitious young upcoming generation of players from the Netherlands. It is France where most of them have managed to find an opportunity to test themselves and see whether they can succeed at the professional level.
When the effect of the proposed stricter regulation in the 2020's begins to be felt, it will be those sort of investments in unproven talent that will take the hit first. It will be the players like Zeno Kieft, who moved to France at 18 to pursue a professional career and eventually displaced Guyot at La Rochelle, who would lose their livelihood in order so it can be guaranteed for the 300th best Frenchman.
Last season in fact we saw an example of what those tighter JIFF restrictions could mean in practice. Apparently Gela Aprasidze impressed his coach Vern Cotter when he came into the senior team after injuries at scrum half, and might have played a couple more times than he did, but lost the opportunity to do so to a French player due to JIFF regulations (for zero benefit to the French national team or anybody except the opposition). It won't be experienced former Springboks like Ruan Pienaar who take the effects first, it will be the young players chasing a dream from places like Georgia.
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| Some want French rugby no longer to be such a land of opportunity for young aspiring players across the globe from places such as Georgia and to instead protect the careers of French journeyman players |
The amount of opportunities France unlike anywhere else offers players from almost anywhere in the world, ought to be celebrated and defended more often by those who care about the global game against some of the lazy and ignorant attacks it faces. Not least because those attacks are now gradually starting to bear fruit for the coming years.
There is a risk that in a few years time we see more instances like that with Aprasidze getting robbed of opportunities not on the basis of merit, along with others simply not getting considered for contracts in the first place, and for those lucky enough to get an opportunity there would likely be greater pressure to give up their international careers in order to increase their value with fewer opportunities available. At the moment there is relatively little effect, but by the end of that proposed JIFF tightening France could no longer be quite the same land of opportunity and dreams for aspiring professional rugby players across the world it has been for most of the professional era.
That would be a big blow to the global game and could cut off the elite professional end of the sport almost completely to many players especially in continental Europe and outside the Anglosphere. In some cases these players do not have any realistic chance of reaching a RWC let alone challenge for the knockout stages. It is only club rugby that can offer an opportunity for a player from almost anywhere in the world to truly test themselves towards the top end of the game, contest for major trophies, and earn widespread recognition for their talent as well as decent money.
At least some of that opportunity is probably going to be lost thanks to what was always an entirely bogus narrative about French players getting no opportunity and foreigners being falsely scapegoated for the national team floundering. We will see how this plays out though in the future, but it's surely a concern for many players from countries like Georgia, Fiji, or aspiring Espoirs from the Netherlands that there is such a lobby opposed to them earning a living as professional rugby players.
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