Every year, like clockwork, the rugby community seems to lose its collective mind over one thing: why France’s top international rugby players from the season to date don’t all eagerly pack their bags and tour the southern hemisphere during the summer. Cue the wild accusations:
“They’re scared!”
“They’re lazy!”
“They are insulting our fans”
“They’re just not committed!”
And every year, the actual reason, simple, factual, boring old reality is ignored in favour of conspiracy theories that would make a budget Netflix documentary blush. So, let’s set the record straight to avoid me having to repeat myself again.
Unlike many other rugby nations, France’s Top 14 competition, the domestic league where most of the country’s best players ply their trade, is brutally long. The season often stretches from early September to mid-to-late June if your club makes it to the play-offs or the final. That’s about 10 months of top-flight, high-pressure, smash-into-each-other rugby, often with European competitions thrown in for good measure, on top of the Autumn Internationals and 6 Nations. Players are battered, bruised, taped together like old furniture, and running on fumes by the time the season wraps up.
World Rugby and the French Rugby Federation (FFR) have player welfare regulations. Clubs and the union have agreements in place to ensure players get a mandatory rest period. You know, so they don’t literally collapse into a heap mid-match next season.
Players are entitled, no, required to have around 8 to 10 weeks off for recovery and pre-season preparation. If they immediately joined the national team for a southern hemisphere tour after finishing a 35-game season, they’d either miss this vital rest or start next season physically wrecked. Neither the clubs nor the national team want that.
Here’s where it gets truly baffling: many people seem to think French players wake up one morning, shrug, and say,
“Non merci, think I’ll pass on tackling Ox this month. Bit tired. Just going to stay in bed with my croissant.”
Reality check: this isn’t their decision.
Players are instructed (and sometimes forbidden) by coaches, clubs, and union agreements to stay home, rest, and avoid becoming yet another statistic in the “career-ending injuries before the age of 30” column. I repeat: players don’t get to opt out of this mandatory rule. This is for their own physical protection. Clubs, as their employers, have a duty of care.
If you’re a top French player, you don’t just “decide” whether or not you fancy a holiday tour of Auckland or Brisbane. You follow medical advice, management plans, and employment contracts that are (quite sensibly) trying to keep you alive and upright with a pulse.
Of course, common sense doesn’t stand a chance against a loud Twitter account or a barstool pundit armed with a pint and a theory.
“Scared of facing the All Blacks!” they cry, as if our Captain, a man who looks like he’d take on a charging rhino just to make it interesting, would be terrified of a rugby match. “He’s just soft!” shout fans who, in fairness, would probably need six months off after tackling a Big Mac.
It’s as if people can’t grasp the idea that elite athletes aren’t action figures you load up when you’re on a gaming platform whenever you want a fight scene. They are humans. Human bodies have limits. Especially after an 10-month pounding at the coalface of one of the most physically demanding sports on the planet.
If you want French rugby players performing at their best, you need them rested, healthy, and properly prepared, not hobbling around the field after 50 matches a year like they’re extras in a zombie movie.
Blaming the players is not just unfair; it’s spectacularly stupid. It’s blaming the passenger for not steering the bus.
Cue the next argument: The FFR should cut down the number of matches in the Top14. Ah yes, the classic “solution” offered by people who’ve never tried running a professional league.
Sure, let’s just tell the clubs, their owners, their broadcasters and their sponsors to kindly make less money and play fewer matches so that Shane from Sydney can watch a June test with a full-strength French XV.
Top 14 clubs aren’t local village fetes with May Pole dancing; they are major businesses with massive budgets, big squads to fund, and huge audiences to serve.
Shortening the season would tank revenues, cripple smaller clubs, and tear apart the competition’s integrity, all for the noble cause of making international fans slightly less impatient for two weeks every summer.
But sure, sounds a perfectly reasonable argument Shane !
Next time the summer tour squads are announced and you notice fewer French A-listers than expected, don’t roll out the tired old “they’re scared” nonsense.Instead, tip your cap, respect the realities of modern rugby, and be grateful we still have functioning player knees this autumn.
So Dear Angry Rugby Fan,
First, thanks for your ongoing commitment to yelling on social media. Your tireless service to rugby takes has not gone unnoticed. Now, onto your main concern:
“Why are the French players too scared to tour the southern hemisphere?”
I know this theory fits neatly into your narrative where All Blacks/Boks/Wallabies are invincible gods and Les Bleus are either running away or crying into their baguettes. But allow me to say: Mate, I really don’t believe that French players are scared of your team. Trust me, the average French player has faced down enough monsters in the Top 14 that running into a black/green&gold/gold jersey doesn’t exactly send them whimpering into their cafe au lait.
You know where this sport does send them though: the physiotherapist’s table, after each match for 10 straight months of full-contact rugby in one of the most physically brutal club competitions on Earth. Some of the less fortunate end up in surgery, to straighten broken tibias, fix dislocated shoulders, the ever crippling ACL rupture, twisted ankle, etc.
You do realise that while your favourite player was having a cheeky surf in February, French players were still in the middle of their season, getting thrown to the frozen ground by 130kg Georgian props, right?
But the part you seem to struggle with is that Players don’t actually get a vote.
There are strict agreements between clubs, the French Federation, and World Rugby that require mandatory rest periods after the French domestic season ends. If they ignored that and went straight into a three-test summer tour, they’d be crawling into the next season held together by tape and optimism. No club, no country, no coach (and certainly no true rugby fan with a working brain cell) wants that. Not to mention that fine imposed by the IRB for flouting rules.
Player welfare isn’t a sexy topic for a fan who just wants to see bodies fly and scorelines climb, but it’s kind of important if you want the best players still standing by the time the Autumn Internationals (or World Cup) roll around.
These players’ bodies are vital to their careers, and shockingly, they prefer not to destroy themselves to appease Shane from Sydney screaming “Come on, you cowards!” from behind a cold lager.
If you truly, deeply miss seeing Toto dance past defenders (notwithstanding his current ACL issue) or Mani and Juju smashing into rucks in June, that’s understandable.
They’re brilliant. They’re box office. They’re stars.
You want to see the best take on the best.
But blaming the players is about as logical as blaming a Formula 1 car for needing a pit stop.
They’re not scared.
They’re not soft.
They’re just managed by people who understand how human bodies work and who prefer fully functioning athletes to career-ending burnout and lawsuits.
They are just playing by the rules.
The next time you’re tempted to call French players “cowards,” do me a favour:
Stand up.
Run headfirst into your nearest elephant 30 times.
Repeat weekly for ten months.
Then let me know if you fancy a summer trip to Johannesburg to tackle Eben Elsebeth and the rest of the 800+ kg of Springbok scrum.
Photo by Jossuha Théophile
