It's the fifth game of the season and already we have the knife at our throat. With a grand total of one point from the four previous outings, we are equal second to last with Toulon, one point ahead of Pau. Bayonne have seven points, comfortably ahead of us, after a home win against Pau and an away draw at Brive. If we lose today we are in all sorts of trouble, because Bayonne, unlike Castres and Toulouse, are a little team, and if we can't beat the little teams when we play at home then we simply aren't up to it.
Bayonne resemble us in many ways, with a forward-oriented game that they seem to have trouble exporting from their home ground. They arrived in the first division last year and did well to stay up, and now they are looking to consolidate and move away from the danger zone at the bottom of the table. They are a much older club, formed by a group of rowers (officially they are part of an omnisport club known as l'Aviron Bayonnais—Bayonne Rowing) who were looking for an energetic winter sport a hundred years ago and who won their first French championship in 1913. Montpellier Rugby Club, a youngster by comparison, is celebrating its twentieth birthday in 2006. Bayonne are direct rivals with us for relegation.
Once again I am on the bench, and I go on after only quarter of an hour when Michel Macurdy breaks his hand. My knees are still heavily strapped—this is my first game back—but, mercifully, they seem to be doing more or less as they are told. We are already 7–0 up and quickly pull out to 10–0. With ten minutes to go to half-time their back-rower Yannick Lamour gets a yellow card, but even with one man up we can't capitalise when we should and are in danger of getting the shakes. All it would need is a quick try to put Bayonne back in the game and we could all start snarling at each other in typically French fashion over whose fault it is and the whole thing could fall apart.
I don't recall ever playing in an non-French team that did anything other than encourage each other on the field, though my memory may be selectively glossing over the darker moments. But, under pressure, French rugby players have the nasty habit of stating the obvious. There is nothing more irritating on a rugby field than having your team-mates tell you that you are screwing up, especially when you are well aware of this. While playing for Perpignan I missed a tackle that led to a try, and my captain said to me, 'You had to tackle him. Why didn't you tackle him? They scored a try because of your missed tackle.'
Different people deal with this in different ways. Some blow it up into a full-scale argument, while others stalk off in a sulk. It's difficult to take it on the chin. You're thinking, 'I know they scored a try because I missed a tackle. Do you think I did it on purpose? What sort of idiot do you take me for? What gives you the right to tell me that I'm crap? So you've never missed a tackle in your life?' Not the most positive line of thinking.
Montpellier, for all the flannel about being a tightly bound group of friends, are quite capable of this sort of back-biting. During one unimportant European Shield game, after a missed tackle had led to a try, our captain, Jérôme Vallée, let fly at the backs while standing under the posts, accusing them of not trying hard enough, while the forwards were working their arses off. Unsurprisingly, this led to a shouting match with Coco, who felt he was the target, and the whole episode did nothing for our much-vaunted team spirit.
Luckily it doesn't come to that as we grind them down up front; the Bayonne pack, difficult to get an edge over in front of their home crowd, seem strangely apathetic, and are obviously suffering from away-game syndrome. A couple more penalties from Coco and another yellow card, this time for Cédric Bergez, Bayonne's lock and captain, yet still we can't score the try that would finish the game. Finally, with ten minutes to go, Lamour gets another yellow card, making his sending-off permanent, and the floodgates open. A number of times I find myself in the unfamiliar role of halfback, slinging the ball wide to our backs, who are carving massive holes in the defence. Two converted tries and a penalty make for an easy-looking 33–0 score-line, and our one regret is that we didn't get the fourth try for an attacking bonus point.
Pau, our next destination, is known as la ville anglaise. It became a recreational centre for wealthy English holidaymakers in the nineteenth century, before the nearby resort of Biarritz became more fashionable. Today, its proximity to the Pyrenees makes it a popular centre for winter sports. It is another medium-sized town in the south-west where rugby has a long history: La Section Paloise, our opponents today, first played a competition game 100 years ago. The club qualified for the Heineken Cup as recently as 2001 but they have been on the slide ever since, with frequent turnovers of staff and players, and last year had to play off to avoid relegation. (There are no play-offs this year.) At €6.54 million their budget is slightly smaller than ours, and having failed to win a game they are currently placed thirteenth. The game at Stade du Hameau is our first real opportunity for an away victory.
One of the knock-on effects of regularly losing games is that individual confidence often evaporates. Instead of taking the kind of risks that lead to scoring opportunities, players limit their potential for being involved in cock-ups: if you don't take risks you don't make mistakes. Not only does this make for boring games, it is also counterproductive. We are shocking at Pau but so are they—it's not a question of home-and-away. The only charitable conclusion to be drawn is that both teams are paralysed by the high stakes; having finally managed to win a game the previous weekend, we can give ourselves a bit of breathing space with a win, while a loss will have Pau breathing down our necks again.
With the honourable exception of our rugged flanker Cédric Mathieu, the one guy on the field to have a standout performance is Pau's young fly-half, Lionel Beauxis, who plays for the French Under 21s. His siege-gun boot keeps us away from their line, and our inability to string together more than a couple of phases of play does the rest. Pau's driving mauls allow Beauxis to get in range for a couple of drop goals in the first half, and they both fly over from 40 metres. Coco Aucagne, on the other hand, is having a bit of a nightmare. He played most of his rugby for Pau, including during his international career in the late 1990s, and in front of his old home crowd he is feeling the pressure. Still, our incompetence is equally matched by their jitters and it's only 9–6 to them at half-time and then 9–9 shortly after the break, when Coco puts a penalty over, but then they slowly pull away.
I watch the whole débâcle unfold from the stands and find it hard to believe that the replacement bench is not being used. Even when, ten minutes into the second half, one of our locks, Sam Nouchi, gets a yellow card for pulling down a cocotte (literally a casserole, but in French rugby parlance a maul), I don't get on. More surprisingly, Régis Lespinas, our young fly-half who has also played for the French Under 21s, doesn't get on either. Despite everything, we were still in the game up until the last 20 minutes, and a change of rhythm injected by Régis might have let us sneak a win.
When I quiz our coach Nourault about this afterwards he says he didn't want to destroy Coco's confidence: pulling him off in front of the old home crowd would be potentially shattering for him, and he seems a bit fragile as it is. In my view, Coco's confidence is in a parlous state exactly because Nourault spends his time ordering him what to do, and not trusting him enough to make his own decisions. Not taking him off when he's playing badly isn't fooling anyone, least of all Coco, who is experienced enough to understand the situation. At first glance it might look like loyalty, which sounds honourable if a little misguided, but really it's just weakness; because Nourault wants to look like the good guy, he avoids taking the hard decisions. We come away without even a bonus point at 21–12, with all the points for both sides coming from kicks.
Perhaps I am being unfair to Nourault. After all, he has relegated me to the bench and this may be colouring my judgement. Alex Codling, the Englishman who arrived to play lock at the start of the season, has done his back in, and looks like being out of the picture for some time, and Michel Macurdy has broken his hand, so there are only three locks left. If Nourault is not using me now he must have really lost faith in me, even though I thought I did well enough against Bayonne. He has a fetish for line-outs, which doesn't go in my favour: although I am tall enough, I don't have the explosive power you need to jump well in the middle, so I find myself more often in a lifting role. Sam Nouchi is about the same size as me and a better line-out forward, so this probably gets him the nod. He is technically a good player— when I was at Perpignan, Saïsset gave me a list, made up by the French selectors, which ranked the locks in the first division. The division was then made up of 20 teams, so about 80 locks were in competition. Sam was placed fifth, just behind the locks of the national side. (I was thirteenth, which is probably as high as I ever got.) But he often doesn't seem very interested, and in my mind I'm a better player because I want it more.
This is the fifth year I have played under Nourault. I was coached by him in Paris for my last two years, and was captain under him and Jacques Fouroux at Racing. Although it was a difficult time for both of us—results were bad and the club was relegated—we respected each other, and formed something of a bond when we both played significant roles in ousting Fouroux, who was a brilliant ideas man and a highly successful coach (and ex-captain) of the French side, but in club rugby had trouble turning his theories into practice. After I later moved to Perpignan, Norault recruited me for Montpellier, and as I was a senior player he consulted me regularly and listened to what I had to say, even if he rarely implemented my ideas. My 'special relationship' with Nourault, therefore, means that my non-selection, difficult to take at any time, has a sting of betrayal about it.
Sitting on the bench, I have time to make a rough calculation about the game. Montpellier and Pau each have budgets of around €6.5 million, a total of €13 million between them. Both teams play 26 championship games in a year, plus six European Shield games. (The latter are often used as run-outs by teams like us, who know we won't win the competition and are in severe need of a breather from the rigours of the French championship. However, for argument's sake we'll give them equal weight.) There are friendly games and so on, but they are for preparation: the raison d'être of the professional team is to perform in the competition. So while hotels and gear and transport costs are included in a club's budget along with salaries, what happens on the field in competition is the end-product: all the time and effort and money poured into a team can be judged only by this.
So dividing €13 million by the number of competition games—32—gives you the value of the money invested by the two clubs in a particular performance: €406,250 or about Ԁ200,000 apiece. That is the amount of money being spent on the sorry spectacle we are producing on this particular Saturday afternoon. (True, I don't get the exact figure while sitting on the bench—I have to use a calculator afterwards. But you don't have to be a genius to see that €13 million divided by 32 is quite a lot of cash.)
Money is, of course, the dark heart of the game at professional level. Shamateurism, l'amateurisme marron, had been around for years in France, and in most of the rest of the world, before 1995, when the IRB finally squared up to reality after the Rugby World Cup in South Africa. It had become clear that the temptation of big dollars from rugby league and Kerry Packer's World Rugby Corporation was threatening to lure top players away from rugby union's traditional structures, leaving a gaping hole at the top level of the game. The IRB gave its blessing to pay-for-play, and suddenly it was all on as clubs in the northern hemisphere and national unions in the south rushed to make sure they had a legal hold on their talent: contracts.
My first-ever contract was signed with the New Zealand Rugby Football Union in January 1996. Because the NZRFU was still a bit iffy about professionalism, and the legal documents had been drawn up in the scramble of late 1995, it was a contract with All Black Promotions Limited: I wasn't being paid to play, I was being paid to be available for promotional work. This was just window-dressing of course: the sum total of my promotional work was an hour spent in a McDonald's restaurant in central Wellington wearing a Wellington polo shirt and signing (not very many) autographs. No one seemed to know quite what they were doing in the brave new world of professionalism, and at times the whole thing seemed a shambles. Marty Leslie, who later went on to play for Scotland, jokingly pencilled in another three zeros to his match fee for Wellington in the National Provincial Championship. The contract was duly signed and, in theory anyway, he should have been paid a million bucks a game.
Looking back, one of the things I particularly like about that first contract, apart from the feeling that we were getting what seemed like free money, was that there was no differentiation between players. Everyone's Super 12 contract was worth the same, NZ$65,000—$50,000 for the Super 12 itself and $15,000 for the National Provincial Championship. All Blacks were, understandably, a big step up on $250,000.
During my first year with Racing, while playing against Aurillac I had my ear half ripped off at the bottom of a ruck. There was no mistaking that it had been a deliberate act: the ball had already made it out to the backs when the boot went in. As I sat fuming, having the ear painfully sewn back together—repeated attempts to anaesthetise it had not worked as the lobe was so thin the needle kept going right through it—Gerald Martinez, the club president, came in to see how I was. I told him I wasn't being paid enough money for this kind of crap. He asked how much more I wanted. I told him another 2000 francs a month. He agreed immediately. I should have been chuffed about getting a 20 percent pay rise on the spot, but instead I again kicked myself that I hadn't asked for more in the first place.
The point of the story is that it is hard for a player to know how much he is worth. Money is difficult: as Philippe Guillard writes in Petits Bruits de Couloir, his excellent book on the vagaries of French rugby: 'If you ask for nothing, you get nothing. And if you ask for too much, you get nothing.'
According to the economics I learnt in the fifth form, the 'market' is supposed to sort out appropriate levels of remuneration. But as I recall (it was a long time ago), to come to the correct conclusion it relies on perfect competition and perfect knowledge, and in rugby this is far from the case. Within the French club scene, teams play each other so often that it is relatively straightforward for a club to assess a player's ability, and decide how much they want to pay him. As a rule of thumb, they find out what he is being paid and offer him a bit more, although this can get a bit complicated if several clubs are interested in the same player.
Young players who look as though they will have a promising career may see big jumps in their salaries. And, of course, playing for France guarantees you good wedge: anyone who has played more than a couple of games for the national side is likely to be on at least €15,000 net a month. On top of this come match fees and win bonuses, as well as sponsorship deals. Certain positions are highly prized because of their rarity—tighthead props, fly-halves and hardrunning number eights all fall into this category, along with goal-kickers.
Where it gets really complicated is when players who arrive from overseas are more or less unknown quantities. Star players from big-name international sides are well-known and sought after, even though they are often past their best, take time to adapt to the different style of play in France, and so underperform in the eyes of the uninitiated. A club will calculate not only the added value to the team of having this kind of star player on the field, but also the added revenue in attracting corporate sponsorship and more spectators.
Players like me, journeymen of a reasonable standard but not internationals, and certainly not stars, are hardest to evaluate. Often a prospect will have some Super 14 experience, so the clubs will look at his video footage, but even then it's not easy to tell how a prop, for example, will adapt to French scrummaging, where the laws are supposedly the same as in the southern hemisphere but the referee's interpretation very different. And for a player, the salary he negotiates when he arrives on the French scene will be crucial: barring brilliant performances (or catastrophic ones) it will be the base figure for his time in France.
It could be anywhere between €3000 and €15,000 a month. The current average is around €7000, which is exactly what I'm on. Throughout my nine-year career in France my pay-packet has closely mirrored the average, going from roughly €2000 in 1997 to €3000 in 1998 and 1999, 4000 in 2000, €5000 in 2001 and 2002, €6000 in 2003 and 2004, to €7000 this season. There have been times when I've felt outrageously underpaid, and others when I have felt guilty about getting too much, so the levels have probably been about right.
Ironically, I played my best rugby on about €4000: my performance has decreased as my wage has increased. Partly this is because I was underpaid early on, and partly because budgets have increased exponentially over the last ten years. Partly, though, I have just become better at negotiating.
While these figures are a long way from the multiple-zero-laden cheques that professional footballers tuck into their banks every month, French rugby pays well—nearly four times the country's average wage. From time to time players are unwelcomingly reminded of our privileged position. When I was at Racing, the president, Éric Blanc, informed us that his mother had performed superhuman feats as a nurse working long hours for less than half what we earned. At a training camp at the start of 2007, Alain Egea, the president of the Association—effectively the club's amateur side, comprising youth teams, women's rugby and l'école de rugby — told us we were lucky compared to workers in the 'real world', and must always be on time. Montferrand coach Alain Hyardet went to the length of taking his players to the Michelin factory to show them what life was like in this 'real world'.
It is true: we are lucky to be well-paid to play a sport we love, and it doesn't hurt to be reminded of this from time to time. But the implicit criticism that we are spoilt overgrown children puts everyone on the defensive. And there are several counter arguments. For a start, if it's such a doddle, why isn't everyone doing it? And while we are on the rugby field, we are missing out on crucial first steps in the 'real world'; it is not easy to pick up a new career in your thirties, when you quit. The money is good. But when we hang up our boots only two or three high-profile players such as Jonny Wilkinson will be able to retire; the rest of us will take up starting positions in the rat race. The lucky ones will have paid off a bit of their mortgage, and the very lucky ones will have made some investments as well.
And then there is the fact that players risk having major injury worries for the rest of their lives. The average office worker may work longer hours for less pay, but he is unlikely to get eye-gouged, or to have to throw himself in the path of rampaging behemoths who want to smash him into the ground and dance on his fallen body.
As a rule, the best way for a player to bump up his salary is to sign a one-year contract, play well, and hawk himself around for the following season. 'What you're on, plus a bit more' every year, as opposed to every two or three years, means the coin starts piling up nicely. Loyalty to a club is not always rewarded by good contracts, and can even be a handicap if, for some reason, you are particularly tied to a region. At Perpignan, for example, one of our players was paid roughly four times as much as another in the same position, even though there was nothing to choose between them on the field. One player had a farm that tied him to living and playing rugby in Perpignan, whereas the other was free to move to the club with the biggest chequebook. No prizes for guessing who got screwed.
The downside to hawking yourself from club to club is the stress. You need to be playing, so other clubs can see what you have to offer. If you are injured, have a run of poor form, or are not playing for some other reason, you will be less in demand and can spend a nervous few months waiting for the phone to ring, watching time tick away to the end of your contract, and wondering where you will be in a few weeks. Every year, there are players who are unemployed at the start of the season. Some never get picked up, while others have to drop a division or two, and find themselves on significantly less cash. Even if you do manage to find a club, there is the scramble over the summer break to find a new place to live, uprooting yourself and your family, and, once there, getting to know a new town and a whole new set of people. I have often found myself in the role of interpreter in discussions between clubs and prospective new players, and
I have seen some interesting decision-making. In my last year at Racing, Éric Blanc took over as president, and just before the season started he got me in to translate in a discussion he was having with two rugby league players from England, John Scales and Jamie Bloem, who had been recommended, in a roundabout way, by Dave Ellis. Ellis is now the defence specialist for the French national side, but in those days he was doing this job for Racing.
There was much small talk, but no light was shed on the men's playing ability, compatibility with the team, or even their passport eligibility. Eventually Blanc said to them in broken English, 'Are you strong? And fast?' 'I can benchpress 130 kilos,' Scales said. 'I can do the 100 metres in about eleven seconds,' Bloem said.
On the strength of this, they were signed up for just over 20,000 francs (€3000) a month plus apartment—1000 francs more than I was getting as an established player. Blanc had assumed that Bloem was English because he spoke English, but it turned out he had a South African passport. This oversight meant three months' delay getting his paperwork sorted out before he could play.
Racing's organisation was borderline comic throughout that whole year (it was no surprise that we were relegated) but this kind of thing goes on everywhere. In 2005, after a friendly game against the Italian side Viadana, I was having a few beers with Viadana's New Zealand players when one of them, Harley Crane, said that he would be keen to come to Montpellier the following year. We grabbed the president, Thierry Pérez, and asked him if he was interested. Harley, a specialist halfback, had been playing centre that night, so his real game hadn't been on show. I explained this and it didn't faze Thierry in the least. He shook Crane's hand and said, 'Très bien.' It was the classic 'what you're on, plus a bit more' and within a couple of minutes the deal was done. Later, I asked Pérez, an independently wealthy real-estate developer, how he had come to such a rapid decision. It had, he said, been simply a gut feeling.
The people who are supposed to ensure the smooth running of the player-transfer market are the agents. The advent of professional rugby led inevitably to the creation of this particular job, and in the first few years, when the rugby landscape resembled the wild west, there was more than one cowboy getting ten percent of players' salaries for what looked like not much effort at all.
Even today, when things have calmed down, players are inclined to think the price is too high. But a good agent can make a big difference to a player's career, and if he gives his client good advice and finds him the best deal, will more than earn his fee. Agents are better placed than players to know the going rate, and theoretically have the player's best interests at heart since the bigger the player's wage, the bigger their own take.
The problem with agents, though, is finding a good one. I have had dealings with five, and not one has ever been sitting beside me holding my hot little hand when I signed a contract. One got paid but that was a scandal, because his only effort was to give Perpignan my phone number after a former coach of mine, Yves Ajac, had given the Perpignan coach Olivier Saïsset the nod on my behalf. Admittedly, there is an element of self-inflicted injury in my unsuccessful dealings with agents; by juggling various possibilities, and generally trying to be too clever, I have got myself into trouble on at least one occasion.
In 2001, in an effort to rid themselves of the kind of reputation that would make used-car salesmen look like paragons of probity, the more legitimate agents formed a union and reached agreement with the Ligue Nationale de Rugby and the Fédération Française de Rugby. This included an obligation for clubs to use only agents with licences. These licences last three years, and since 2003 agents have had to pass an exam to obtain one.
French law now prohibits players from using more than one agent, but it is well known that some agents have better connections to certain clubs than others, and so the law is sometimes flouted. In 2003, for example, I wanted to play for Stade Français. At the time, and maybe still today, Stade Français recruited most of its players through an agent called Pascal Forni. Another agent, Bruno Xamma, had already approached me with the possibility of going to Montferrand. I preferred Stade Français but I wasn't about to throw out Montferrand in case this didn't work, so I agreed with Xamma that if I went to Montferrand it would be through him, but otherwise I was with Forni.
Forni knew this as well, but he also knew (quite quickly, I think) that Stade Français didn't want me. Instead of passing on this information, he rang Hyardet and told him I wasn't interested in Montferrand, and was only using it to try and gain some leverage on Stade Français. As a result of this Machiavellian move Hyardet and Montferrand went sour.
I should have been stuck back with Forni, who could now get commission on me by selling me to someone else, while he placed another one of his players at Montferrand. But I was unhappy about Forni's dirty tricks—he obviously hadn't banked on Hyardet telling me what had happened—so I made my own way to Montpellier. In the meantime, Biarritz called and made an offer through another agent, Laurent Quaglia, while coming to an agreement with Montpellier not to get an auction going for my services.
If you think this sounds confusing, it certainly made my head hurt. Forni, to give him his due, had a stable of around 200 players, and I suspect my incessant calling got to him. Rugby players waiting for news from their agents are like hopeful young lovers staring at the phone, willing it to ring, and fretting about why their sweetheart hasn't got in touch: coltish and panicky. 'Has he lost the number?' we ask ourselves. 'Has something terrible happened? It can't do any harm if I give him a quick ring, just to see how things are going.' And this, in my case, was three or four times a week over a period of a couple of months.
The year before this I had had uncomfortable dealings with Pau. The club wanted to buy me from Perpignan, who were keen to sell me on. Although I had a year left on my contract, Perpignan had bought two new locks and were happy enough to get rid of me if they could turn a profit. Pau were to pay €25,000 to Perpignan and were supposed to up my salary as well, so I went over to have a look around, meet the president and the coach, and talk about their plans.
David Escloupier, a part-time agent from Perpignan, was handling the negotiations, but he didn't come over with me. No expenses were paid. I drove from Perpignan for four hours, put myself up in a hotel, and although I was to meet with them at nine the next morning, didn't get to see the president, André Lestorte, until after five in the afternoon. By then I was decidedly tetchy, having wasted a day and being about €400 out of pocket.
Lestorte seemed to think the whole thing was a done deal and I would be delighted to come and play for his club. Or perhaps the matter had already been stitched up between him, my agent and Marcel Dagrenat, the Perpignan president, and he was convinced I had no other options. Unhappy about being treated like a piece of meat, I was starting to think just the opposite. The coach was unconvincing, and the clincher came the following day when Lestorte faxed through a written copy of the terms we had discussed. Although we had verbally agreed on €6000 a month, the figure in the document was more like €5000; he had clearly decided to skimp on my pay because he thought I had nowhere else to run.
At this point I no longer had any financial interest in going to Pau, and was sceptical about how the club was going to fare. Meanwhile, though, my agent was encouraging me to go: if I didn't, he wouldn't get paid. Despite threats and cajoling from both Dagrenat and the agent, I opted to stay in Perpignan. Biarritz made me an offer but weren't prepared to pay the transfer fee, and Dagrenat refused to let me go without someone coughing up.
Herein lies a problem with agents. They are supposed to be acting for players, but they are usually paid by clubs. Players don't like the idea of ten percent coming out of their salary—it feels too painful to have to hand a chunk of money you feel is rightfully yours to someone else—so the usual arrangement is that clubs pay the fee directly to the agent, although this is, of course, money they would otherwise give to the player. This means the agents are, effectively, employed by the clubs as head-hunters, and in situations where conflict arises between a player and a club, they will often advise the player according to what the club wants, not according to what is best for the player. In their eagerness to stay onside with clubs, they are, if you like, double agents. While there are hundreds of players, and the pool of talent is constantly being renewed, there are only a small number of clubs, and it is not unknown for presidents to bully agents with the threat of refusing to work with them again if they don't get players to do what they, the club, want.