French top 14 or Barbarian top 14?

I am currently watching a delayed match of Toulon vs Racing Metro that was played this weekend and it struck me how many of the players are actually not French. Have a look at the players who started for each of these teams that are not french.

Racing Metro
Frans steyn – South Africa
Sireli Bobo – Fiji
Juan Imhoff – Argentina
Juan Martin Hernandes – Argentina
Francois van der Merwe - South Africa – It seems have no qualified as eligible for France
Bernard le Roux – South Africa – It seems have no qualified as eligible for France
Jaques Cronje – South Africa


Toulon
Luke Rooney – Australia
Matt Giteau – Australia
David Smith – New Zealand
Johnny Wilkinson – England
Eifion Roberts – Wales
Carl Hayman – New Zealand
Bakkies botha – South Africa
Joe van Niekerk - South Africa
Steffon Armitage - England

Of 30 starters there are:

14 French
6 South African
2 Argentinean
2 Australian
2 New Zealanders
2 English
1 Fijian
1 Welsh

Looking at that my question is this, is this the case for all of the Top 14 teams?

If that is the case then I fear for French rugby, how can half your club starters be non french? If this is indeed the case or anywhere near it, then it means that close to half the players are non french.

I am now starting to understand why french rugby is so up and down, these guys hardly ever get the opportunity to play together.

They might as well be called the French barbarians.

Toulon is a particularly bad example when it comes to having mostly foreigners starting.. the likes of Toulouse play a mostly french side I believe. However, that is a bit ridiculous.. 9 non-french players for Toulon. Not good.

Yes it's crazy. Some of the French outfits, particularly these two funnily enough, barely contribute anything to the national side. They are 90% fixed on their own interests as football-esque clubs run by multi-millionaire tycoons. Hopefully this chokes French rugby enough that some restrictions are put in place in future.

As Rory said some of the traditional heavyweights such as Toulouse and Clermont put far more into France. At Toulon developing from the academy must be virtually unknown!

Well in all honesty I find this pathetic that clubs can have this amount of free reign.

Does the French rugby Union have no control over this?

It certainly doesn't seem to be the case.

I think their salary cap is huge, something like 8m I think I heard once. The game is being footballized over the Channel unfortunately, as I said they don't seem to have any restrictions on NFQ players and some clubs are currently businesses unto themselves.

This might be slated as over-reaction but I see the way the French game is run as something akin to evil. I'm not sure they're that sensitive to the fine line that needs to be drawn between football and rugby, I mean just look at the example that has been set in discipline (the Attoub, Dupuy and Bastareaud fiascos). As I said the clubs are being handed over to tycoons and the FFR doesn't seem to care much at all. Individual interests all the way

With 14 clubs in their top division I guess they can have a little more flexibility than other nations i.e.

IRE - 4 (3 real, no disrespect to Connacht but they have no test player and aren't producing any).
Wales - 4
Scotland - 2
NZ - 5
AUS - 5
SA - 5

Even if they averaged 9 players a team... that would be 126 french players playing top level French rugby....

thats compared to 45 Irish, 60 Welsh, 30 Scottish, and 75 a piece for NZ, AUS or SA.... thats not that bad when you think about it.

FA, I disagree. If there is no control on the number of players France can soon find themselves in a position where in certain positions they have no depth.

There obviously will be natural checks and balances.

Only if NZ, AUS & SA suddenly did not centrally contract or could not keep their top players would it be an issue.... until then they will only get 2 types of SH players... has beens looking to up their pension and those like Claassens and Botha who weren't good enough to get a S15 contract initially.

Until then I would say there will always be enough talent in France to keep their numbers in all positions healthy as one thing France always has had in abundance and thats talent... much more so then a once great but now dis-interested kiwi/aussie/saffa.

Although if it was to get much worse then perhaps you're right...some sort of foreigner cap would need to be enforced.

biltongbek wrote:FA, I disagree. If there is no control on the number of players France can soon find themselves in a position where in certain positions they have no depth.

FA has a point specially if you add the 16 PRO D2 outfits, thats 30 professional outfits : would be difficult for all of them to have squads made up with 90% of french players. It would be bad for the quality of the game played here and would artificially inflate the value of the decent french players which is already the case to some extent (why do you think toulouse and clermont have the best french players? They havent been all brought there for sure despite having some good academies). You cant compare it to SH or pro12 provinces to be honest, in france it is all dilluted. If we only had 5 teams I am pretty sure Wilkinson would still be at newcastle. At last, am not abig toulon fan but they are not much worst than others french teams from the 1 st down to the 3rd divisions (reckon the average number of foreigners in a starting 15 is probably 6)

Also there is some sort of control in place which requires pro teams to have 50% of JIFFs players (players issued from french academies) in their squads and thats already a positive move.
Biltong does have a point though as there is a problem in specialist positions such as fly half and tight head as you need time to bring a player at a good level in those positions. So thats why most T14 teams will have the temptation to buy an experienced foreigner rather than being patient (and sometimes it is quite questionable like when racing is about to sign dan biggar)

The French have pretty big squads, with lots of imports. I think the number of French players in starting 15's last weekend was:
Bayonne 11
Brive 6
Toulon 6
Racing Club 5
Stade Francais 7
Agen 1
Lyon 9
Barritz 8
Clarmont 7
Perpignan 12
Bordeau 4
Toulous 10
Castre 12
Monpellier 6
Mostly SH imports. The irony is there were probably more SA or Kiwis starting accross the major tournements last weekend (despite having only 5 teams each playing). I think about 120 saffers ran out in starting 15's vs about 110 French players.

blackcanelion wrote:The French have pretty big squads, with lots of imports. I think the number of French players in starting 15's last weekend was:
Bayonne 11
Brive 6
Toulon 6
Racing Club 5
Stade Francais 7
Agen 1
Lyon 9
Barritz 8
Clarmont 7
Perpignan 12
Bordeau 4
Toulous 10
Castre 12
Monpellier 6
Mostly SH imports. The irony is there were probably more SA or Kiwis starting accross the major tournements last weekend (despite having only 5 teams each playing). I think about 120 saffers ran out in starting 15's vs about 110 French players.

Well at least the South Africans are making money over there, the question though is how long before there will be more Van der Merwes in the French team than Rougeries?

I'm not sure. More of you guys playing in France than the other leagues. A fair portion of the England team seems to have a SA connection, I guess it's just a matter of time for the same to happen in France (even accounting for the players with blood connections).

Agen's a bit of a shocker, Maxime Machenaud, the halfback, was the only French starter.

To be fair Biltong, looking at the wider picture in the particular cases of RM and Toulon. They were both in Federale 1, France's 3rd div in the 05-06 season. Toulon got into the Top 14 by 08 while Racing Metro 09. That is some feat and it was undoubtedly because of the high class foreign players they brought in.

You'd like to think that as they continue to establish themselves in the Top 14, both will look to develop their academies and bring young Frenchmen into the team along side the foreign players, at least most French fans probably hope so...

To make things worse, there are going to be more next season, Gethin Jenkins, Luke Charteris, I am sure there are a few others as well but you can bet your bottom dollar that these players will be starting for their clubs as well because they are not going on the cheap.

blackcanelion wrote:
Agen's a bit of a shocker, Maxime Machenaud, the halfback, was the only French starter.

yep, looks like my assumption of 6 foreigners in a starting 15 was wrong big time. Looked at Agen full squad and there is 23 french players out of 46-47 so approx 50% but still most of them are not making the 1st team so the rule doesnt make a big difference unfortunately.
Rugbyplayers must be the one the biggest exported commodity by SA after diamonds!