Top 14 coaches are used to having to be inventive to field a squad composition weekend after weekend. Between the meetings of the French championship, those of the European Cup − and incidentally the rest periods − the calendar is plentiful, even indigestible when you add a few dates of the final stages and the unavailability of the Blues during the Six Nations Tournament and test matches. But this season, the staff puzzle becomes almost mission impossible with the World Cup.
The first to work are the coaches of Bayonne and Toulouse, who open the new season of Top 14, Friday August 18, on the lawn of the Stade Jean-Dauger (9:05 p.m.). Reigning French champions, the red and black will have to do without nine players present in the group of 42 Blues preparing for the World Cup (reduced to 33, Monday August 21, when the final list was announced). Renowned absences (Antoine Dupont, Thomas Ramos, Julien Marchand…), to which are added those selected in other nations.
Although the main provider of the XV of France, Stade Toulouse is far from being the only club affected by this avalanche of empty chairs in the locker room. On the side of the Toulon Rugby Club (RCT), for example, around fifteen players have been missing since the start of summer preparation. “We have a smaller squad but we don’t think about the players who aren’t there. We concentrate just as much, “describes Pierre Mignoni, director of rugby at the RCT. On the harbour, one of the solutions found was the massive use of “Jokers World Cup”.
French clubs thus have the right to recruit players whose contracts can go until November 19, three weeks after the end of the World Cup. Interesting point for the teams: the contracts of these intermittent workers are not taken into account in the salary cap – the maximum authorized payroll each season fixed at 10.7 million euros. Toulon has thus temporarily enlarged its ranks with four players, including Welshman Alun Wyn Jones (158 caps) and Frenchman Noa Nakaitaci (15 caps).
Three games then a two-month break
“The goal was not to recruit to recruit and take guys at all costs, but to target the positions where we have needs. We were looking for players who would be effective immediately,” adds Pierre Mignoni. If these reinforcements are welcome – and that all the clubs of the Top 14 or almost have recourse to them – this only partially compensates for the difficulty of the staff who had to adapt their recruitment and their preparation for a sprint of… three days of the championship. The first division will indeed pause at the beginning of September, to make way for the World Cup (from September 8 to October 28).
The championship will resume its rights the day after the final. “The two-month break, we will approach it differently with three games lost or with three games won, described Toulouse third line Alban Placines on Thursday at a press conference. It is therefore important to put yourself in the right conditions, so that these two months are not a period where you are thinking, where you cannot react. You must not miss before. “Especially since the recovery, the teams of the Top 14 will not always fully benefit from the return of their troops. The internationals will indeed benefit from a few weeks of vacation at the end of the course of their selection.
Once the numbers are finally complete, the coaches will have to take advantage of it because it won’t last. The French internationals will return to the staff of the Blues in early 2024, to play in the next Six Nations Tournament (February 2 to March 16). During this time, the clubs will have to play three “duplicates”, weekends where matches of the XV of France and championship meetings collide. The puzzle has only just begun for the Top 14 coaches.