French rugby: James Coughlan looks to lift Biarritz from the doldrums
BIENVENUE: Former Munster No. 8 James Coughlan is the director of rugby at French outfit Biarritz. Pic credit: Biarritz.
FRANCE'S ProD2 gets under way at the end of August, followed by the Top 14 on the first weekend of September – and there’s plenty to discuss, from club buyouts to player transfers, as the domestic rugby season soap opera in France resumes.
One ProD2 club, Biarritz, will kick off a first campaign under new ownership, after a €1 fire sale in April brought an end to a turbulent era at Parc des Sports d’Aguilera.
Former Munster backrow James Coughlan is the sporting director charged with turning around playing fortunes at the Basque club following the Spring takeover, heading up a completely new staff – headed by former Stade Francais academy director Boris Bouhraoua – and featuring a thoroughly revamped squad.
Targets are already higher than last season, when survival on and off the pitch was the only goal after then-owner Vincent Gave and then-president Jean-Baptiste Aldige – who is now in charge at Nice – threw in the towel in February. “We want to be a team capable of winning wherever we go,” a bullish Coughlan said in a recent interview with Sud Ouest.
Preseason results are not always reliable indicators of the future, but a 33-5 home victory over ProD2 rivals Dax may be considered a promising start for the new regime which, given Bouhraoua’s background, is prioritising an academy production line.
Meanwhile, another historic French club, Beziers, is reportedly under offer after four years in municipal hands.
The local mairie had taken charge of the club in 2020 – deeming it ‘too big to fail’ after French rugby’s financial watchdog halted a controversial proposed Emirati takeover, amid concerns over exactly where the money was coming from.
This new offer, headed by former All Black Andrew Mehrtens, who has long-standing links with the club and the area, has passed the cautious mairie’s own tests, and is now in the hands of the league. New owners could be installed before the ProD2 season kicks off.
Player recruitment news dominates the news cycle in the Top 14, for this season – and the next.
Ronan O’Gara’s La Rochelle are reportedly urgently seeking a short-term medical joker signing after Raymond Rhule was sidelined until 2025 after rupturing an Achilles in pre-season training.
And the saga of World Cup-winning captain Siya Kolisi’s future at Racing 92 continues. According to reports, the French club and URC side Sharks are close to agreement on a release deal, and Racing think they may have found a Top 14-ready replacement in Gloucester’s Zach Mercer – though they would need to invest some of any Kolisi deal money to bring him to La Defense Arena.
This close to the start of the campaign, however, almost all the deals are done. But the race to next season’s recruitment coups has started early. O’Gara’s La Rochelle were fastest out of the blocks, snapping up Racing’s star scrum-half Nolann Le Garrec to replace Tawera Kerr-Barlow from 2025/26, not long after the current crop of players had returned for preseason training.
That news prompted a flurry of transfer speculation. Bayonne are resigned to losing future French tighthead Tevita Tatafu to Bordeaux and have, it’s rumoured, covetous eyes on the experience of Leinster and Ireland’s Tadhg Furlong.
Unreported in Ireland so far, however, is the fact that the French side are hedging their tighthead bets somewhat and also monitoring Toulon’s Georgian Beka Gigashvili, as they look to a Tatafu-free future.
Bayonne do have the inside track on Toulouse scrum-half Paul Graou in what promises to be a very active French market for nines in the coming 12 months, amid reports he is keen to step out of Antoine Dupont’s shadow. Graou played 28 matches last season, including 19 as starter. But news freshly minted Olympic champion Dupont could be back in Toulouse colours as early as the beginning of October means his chances are likely to be curtailed in the coming months, despite an impressive run of performances.
The news has prompted speculation that Toulouse could, finally, pry Uruguay star Santiago Arata from Castres, who – reports suggest – is ready to trigger a release clause in his current contract, which runs to 2026.
Racing, for their part, are looking at Brive’s up-and-coming Leo Carbonneau. Lyon’s Baptiste Couilloud and Montpellier’s Leo Coly are among those attracting early interest.
Toulouse may also be ready to part ways with centre Pierre-Louis Barassi. Chances have been limited at Ernest Wallon for the player once considered the future of France’s midfield, and he may want to reboot his career somewhere else.
Bordeaux’s Yoram Moefana is also coming to the end of his current contract. Yannick Bru will be keen to keep him, but will have to hold off the interest of numerous other clubs.
But Bru is also fighting to keep hold of star fly-half Mathieu Jalibert. The France international has, so far, rejected a couple of extension offers and has been, since July 1, fair game for approaches from other clubs. Stade Francais’ Laurent Labit is a long-standing admirer – but with Louis Carbonel moving to Paris this summer, may be out of the 10 market in the short term.
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