Amid odd Toulon statements, speculation mounts around club's two biggest signing

It’s no huge surprise, given the huge amount of money sloshing about, that the Top 14 is a storm-tossed maelstrom of rumour and speculation. Some of it is way off the mark. Some of it turns out to be entirely accurate.

Right now, little more than a month before the new Top 14 season kicks off, two clubs are at the centre of three player mysteries in Malakai Fekitoa, Semi Radradra, and Johan Goosen.

Much of the current rugby talk in France – despite some fairly heavy and insistent denials from his agent – is all about whether sometime All Black Malakai Fekitoa will head to Toulon at the end of the Super Rugby season.

It’s no secret that the player has been a long-term target for the club. A deal seemed set in unofficial stone until the player’s 14-minute cameo in the third Test against the Lions. Then, doubt, apparently, crept in.

President Mourad Boudjellal reignited the Fekitoa speculation fire at a fan event earlier this week when he declared that the ‘imminent arrival of a world champion All Black centre’, would be ‘the biggest coup of the summer transfer market’.

Forty-eight hours later, the club poured cold water on its owner’s provocative come-on, insisting in an official statement that no player news can be officially considered official until it is officially announced – which Boudjellal’s comments, apparently, were not – and that anything prior to an official announcement, should one be made officially, was nothing more than wild and unsubstantiated speculation.

Following Toulon’s Fekitoa logic, there is no official news, either, about forgotten signing, Parramatta flyer Semi Radrada.

The player’s management team are clear that he will head to France in September.

Incorrecte, Radradra venu a Toulon en Septembre. @RugbyramaFR

— Next Generation Sports (@Next_G_Sports) July 18, 2017

So is Radradra. He told Australia’s Daily Telegraph that he was looking forward to heading to France at the end of the NRL season, when he also shattered Fijian hopes that he would join the national side for the rugby league World Cup.

So far, however, Toulon have remained stonily silent. And Radrada’s name was noticeably absent from the list of squad players announced at the same fan event that prompted the new feeding frenzy over Fekitoa. Official announcements, etc…

Meanwhile, on the outskirts of Paris, there’s a hint that Racing 92 and South African utility back Johan Goosen may have mended the bridges they had apparently not just burned but nuked, dissolved in acid and buried in concrete midway through last season.

Unlike Fekitoa and Radrada, no agents are visibly involved. Like Toulon, the club has made no official announcement. But the player’s bio is on the squad page of club’s website for the 2017/18 season.

The 24-year-old – who was voted Top 14 player of the 2016/17 season following a Brennus-winning campaign – suddenly quit Racing in December, despite earlier signing a contract extension to remain at the club until 2020.

He announced his retirement rather than continue to pick up the reported €40,000 a month his five-year Racing contract would have earned him, and became commercial director of a stud farm in his native South Africa for a reported 10% of his previous salary.

In March, rumours surfaced that Goosen was reconsidering his decision. Some even speculated he was ready to make a shock return to the Top 14 and the club he had suddenly quit. That never happened. But last month, French sports newspaper L’Equipe tracked him down in Bloemfontein, where they took photographs of him practising his kicking while sporting the shorts of his former (and possibly future) club.

It’s worth repeating that, as with the Toulon duo, there is no official news from the club on Goosen’s future. And French rugby media would have exploded if he had been spotted at the club’s Plessis-Robinson training ground. They got excited enough over the Bloemfontein pictures.

The image on the website may be there in error. But it has been up a while. It may be a subtle reminder to other clubs and rugby agencies that there’s – officially at least – unfinished legal business over Goosen’s December departure.

It may be that there is some huge news still to come.

Such is the Top 14. Such is modern, professional rugby. The only truth is that, sometimes, we just have to wait and see.