The time is nigh for the Rugby Football Union (RFU) to provide unambiguous details of the so-called “hybrid” contracts for England players. They are set to start next season, but they have obvious implications right now for players arranging their next moves.
News broke over the weekend of England prospect Henry Arundell extending his stay with Racing 92 in the French league until 2025, and putting himself off-limits to the national team unless there is a change to the ban on overseas-based players.
Some reports claimed Arundell had turned down a joint-offer from the RFU with Bath. A gradual seeping of information suggests the RFU will pay around £150,000 on top of club wages in return for more of a say over a player’s season, not that anyone employed at Twickenham has ever publicly used the word “hybrid” or indeed “central” in relation to these new proposals for around 25 players from 2024 onwards.
But there was a fresh twist at Bath, after Saturday’s impressive 37-14 win over Ulster in the Champions Cup. The home side’s head coach Johann van Graan pointedly told i that he works with the RFU all the time, but it will be the club’s call alone as to which players come to the Rec.
This raises the intriguing point that a club may not want to recruit a player over whom they do not have full control. Such is the minefield that Steve Borthwick needs to navigate as he seeks to build a winning team.
Nothing beats a late comeback
The Investec Champions Cup’s branding strapline has changed from “the one to win” to “cup rugby at its best”, but there are gripes about a supposedly elite competition that comprises a whopping eight teams from each of the competing leagues (Premiership, United Rugby Championship, Top 14), then trims off just eight of those 24 teams during four rounds of pool play before the round of 16 in April.
Never mind, there’s always the thrill of a late winning score to cut through the fog. Henry Slade’s conversion 48 seconds into added time sealed Exeter Chiefs’ excellent win away to Toulon, and Callum Sheedy’s dropped goal with 84 minutes on the clock edged Bristol past Lyon at Ashton Gate. Cue mobbings from team-mates, and less of a French impact on the opening weekend than had been anticipated.
Owen Farrell booed by Bulls fans in South Africa
Overall, a spectacular start for the English clubs in the Champions Cup, with wins for Bath, Bristol, Exeter, Harlequins, Leicester, Northampton – expertly guided by Alex Mitchell and Fin Smith away to Glasgow – and Sale.
The only Premiership team defeated were Saracens, who had a chastening experience in the South African sun of Pretoria, beaten 27-16 by the Bulls, and picking up a red card for Billy Vunipola. There was also “bandwagon” booing for Owen Farrell at Loftus Versfeld, as the fly-half made his first appearance since stepping away from England duty.
“I’m apologising for all the booing of Owen Farrell, it’s not what we’re about, and we will address that,” said Bulls’ former South Africa coach Jake White.
“I just think people have jumped on the bandwagon in terms of all the negative media, which I don’t understand. I wanted people to enjoy that you get to see him play at Loftus. You equate that to watching Tiger Woods play golf or to [Michael] Jordan play basketball.”
Saracens will look to avoid an early last dance by beating Connacht next weekend, with Lyon and Bordeaux to follow in January.
Gloucester get back to winning ways
Gloucester bounced out of their six straight losses in the Premiership with a 15-10 win over Black Lion in the Challenge Cup in Tbilisi. The home team are a composite selection from the Georgian semi-professional league, backed by Bidzina Ivanishvili, the billionaire rugby lover and former prime minister.
Black Lion and South Africa’s Cheetahs came through a tender process to take part in this season’s Challenge Cup – the meagre remnants of what used to be an expansionist remit for the competition in new territories such as Spain, Romania, Germany and Russia. That role has passed instead to the likes of Rugby Europe’s Super Cup, in which Black Lion beat Tel Aviv Heat in the 2022 final.
Video-sharing in the name of harmony
We could do with new terminology to acknowledge the South African teams in the European competitions – “EuroSaf”, anyone? – but whatever we call them, the organisers have a match-officials manager Tony Spreadbury keen to promote harmony between coaches and referees.
A thankless task, maybe, but Spreadbury – the English ex-Test whistler who previously had the same role with the RFU – allows teams to send him up to eight clips of areas they would want looked at before each match. The clips deemed good and sensible are sent on to the match referee, who can have a call with a team’s head coach up to 72 hours before kick-off.
Post-match, another other eight clips plus feedback can be sent to Spreadbury who with his counterparts in the three leagues review it all on the Monday and Tuesday, then feed back to the referees on Wednesday and Thursday.