Feeding into a rugby transfer frenzy

With Leinster the sole province flying the Irish flag in this weekend’s Champions Cup quarter-finals, it’s natural the thoughts of supporters of other teams are already turning to next season.

There’s obviously still a Pro12 to be won, but this is the time of year when lots of rugby’s major transfer deals get announced. This week alone, we’ve seen Ulster land Charles Piutau while Mils Muliaina is swapping Connacht for Zebre. Both were announced on April 1, but nobody was fooling around.

Given Piutau has played for the All Blacks but isn’t a regular international, the reported €700,000 a year he’ll be getting at Ulster is massive. Proven internationals command big money and rightly so, but he’s not quite in that bracket yet. Should he make the New Zealand World Cup squad — and that’s very much up in the air given he’s off to Europe — it might be a different story, but at the moment, for that price, he represents a bit of a gamble for Ulster.