New All Blacks coach gets soft landing as France puts club over country in hammer blow to World Rugby’s Nations Championship
All Blacks hooker Codie Taylor and an inset of France boss Fabien Galthie.
France have dealt World Rugby’s Nations Championship tournament its first blow with Fabien Galthie barred from selecting his best possible team for their first match.
The French Rugby Federation (FFR) and the French rugby league (LNR) announced on Tuesday that an agreement has been reached over the new policies around player release to the national team and availability to the Test set-up.
The agreement reached means that the trend of Les Bleus sending second-string teams to the Southern Hemisphere countries will continue.
All Blacks to face weakened French again
This after France were whitewashed 3-0 when they faced the All Blacks in New Zealand last year and sent a similarly weakened outfit to Argentina in 2024.
A statement from the FFR and the LNR, who run the Top 14, said the player release deal will run until 2031 and is set to be ratified at both bodies’ annual meetings on February 4.
“It’s the right compromise to be able to have the best league in the world and the France national team in a position to win a Rugby World Cup,” the two said.
“It’s a principle of intelligence and co-operation between the France coaches and the club coaches,” they added.
The agreement means that France boss Galthie will not be able to select individuals involved in the French Top 14 final for the team’s Nations Championship opener against the All Blacks in Christchurch on July 4.
The domestic competition’s final will be held a week earlier in Paris, and while the head coach will be allowed to select who he wishes for round two onwards, with ensuing fixtures against Australia and Japan, a case-by-case agreement with clubs will need to be reached.
In November last year, Six Nations Rugby and SANZAAR officially confirmed that the inaugural season of the Nations Championship would take place in 2026, after it was ratified by World Rugby’s council in 2023.
The biennial tournament has been heralded by the unions as a ‘watershed’ moment for rugby union and a ploy to reform the international game for the better.
In the statement unveiling the tournament, Six Nations CEO Tom Harrison said: “The Nations Championship has the power to redefine the future of rugby, and the partnership between Six Nations Rugby and SANZAAR signals a tectonic shift in the sport.
“Rugby’s strongest nations have collaborated with a clear vision to grow the game, by challenging traditional ways of operating to create a tournament structure with genuine global relevance, which will unlock the true value of the sport.”
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Club over country
However, France have once again put club over country and despite the claim that the tournament would challenge the ‘traditional ways of operating’, it’s a decision that automatically devalues the competition.
There is no getting around the fact that the Top 14 is currently the premier club competition in the game. Week-on-week, the stadiums are packed, it continues to attract some of the biggest names in the game, while many of the teams are the most well-funded and financially stable in the world.
Effectively, this is a power struggle with the clubs holding the aces, and the national team needing to make compromises over the release of the biggest and brightest stars. It’s a situation that no other nation has to navigate with its domestic teams, but a trade-off that means that all the best talents remain in France and produces arguably the most competitive and well domestic league.
But it certainly has its drawbacks. Last November, Les Bleus looked disjointed, unorganised and rusty when they collided in a grudge match with the Springboks in their first meeting since the 2023 Rugby World Cup quarter-finals. In the aftermath, Galthie stated that it was the team’s first game of the international season, and it was true as it was the first time that the first-string team had played as a unit since winning the Six Nations in March with a youthful outfit going to New Zealand in July.
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Soft landing for the new All Blacks
Les Bleus were soundly beaten 17-32 by the Springboks and laboured to a 34-21 victory over Fiji a week later, albeit in an entertaining fixture. While they produced a more compelling performance to beat the Wallabies 48-33 in the final game of the Autumn Nations Series, France still didn’t look like a well-drilled and cohesive team.
The claim that this agreement will put the ‘team in a position to win a Rugby World Cup’ will be put through the wringer again in 2027 after the ploy failed to deliver the desired result three years ago. The agreement between the LNR and FFR means that until the 2031 tournament in the USA, the France head coach will continue to be hamstrung for the July Test matches, and the start of the Nations Championship every year, and his best players won’t experience playing against the top nations in the world away from home.
New Zealand will be the beneficiary of this policy once again as Galthie could arrive in Aotearoa with many of the best France has to offer – particularly if Toulouse and Bordeaux reach the Top 14 final, the two big contributors to the Les Bleus squad.
Scott Robertson’s successor will get a soft landing when they take over the All Blacks’ head coaching reins. France have beaten New Zealand 15 times in the history of the fixtures between the two nations, three of which have come since 2021. However, the last time Les Bleus managed to beat the All Blacks in New Zealand was all the way back in 2009, with the French regularly sending over weakened teams.
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Following the clash against France, New Zealand will face Italy in round two before completing their home leg of the Nations Championship against Ireland, before the highly anticipated Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry tour to South Africa in August.
There was a hope that the Nations Championship would convince the respective French organisations to change their policies, but that has not been the case.
