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'Final stages are tears and blood, business made on human misery'
By Liam Heagney
Biarritz president Jean-Baptiste Aldige has branded the current promotion format to the Top 14 from Pro D2 as “tears and blood, a business made on human misery”. In the past the team that finished on top of the table in the regular season would gain automatic promotion, allowing them additional time to prepare for the resulting season in the top flight.
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However, that stipulation was scrapped in 2017 in preference of end-of-season playoffs contested by the top six teams in the division. Only after those additional games is the playoff winner promoted while the beaten finalists get a second chance at promotion as they playoff against the 13th place team in the Top 14.
Whereas previously a team out in front in the regular season could anticipate in advance they were going to top the league and go up, allowing them to begin their recruitment at an early stage, such planning is now put on hold given the lack of certainty.
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It was last June when Perpignan were eventually confirmed as champions and they are now facing a playoff to safeguard their Top 14 status for next season as they are set to finish 13th unless they overhaul Brive in the final two rounds of matches.
It was via this additional playoff that Biarritz secured their Top 14 return eleven months ago, winning a clash with Bayonne who placed 13th in the Top 14, and it left them in a race to secure some signing in time for the September 4 start of this season’s top-flight campaign.
It didn’t go well for Biarritz as they were relegated last Saturday and now return to the Pro D2 after just a single season back in the Top 14. They have departed with a stinging observation about the current format in the league, a sharp opinion delivered by club president Aldige in the Midi Olympique rugby newspaper. “The final stages of Pro D2 are tears and blood. It is business made on human misery,” he said.
“As it stands, we send the Pro D2 clubs to the butchery. If Biarritz had stayed up this year, it would have been relegated the following season. It is inevitable. More than the final stages, rugby needs a strong territorial network, stronger than it is today, where eight clubs are fighting for the title.
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“We must allow new clubs to reach the wage bill ceiling hit for a long time by the big eight and thus embody new forces. Today, with the current system, the only hope of seeing a new club emerge is for a billionaire to show up and write cheques…”
Is he confident that a change in the format will happen? “I don’t know… The change of formula of the Pro D2 was part of the campaign program of Rene Bouscatel (the current president of the LNR). Why is it taking so long? Why don’t we go tomorrow? However, a single meeting of the steering committee would be enough to pass the law…
“It would take an hour, what… And if you want to see, tomorrow, clubs like Biarritz, Aix-en-Provence, Oyonnax or Bayonne, give them the right to cross the gap one day and settle permanently in the Top 14, as La Rochelle did after many attempts. You have to speed up the manoeuvre.
“There is no one left on the market in June… The remaining Jiffs, no one took them, either because they no longer have the level, or because they are injured… We don’t recruit players from a catalogue and in the space of three days!
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“To study and analyse a player’s profile, our recruitment unit sometimes spends three months there. Saying like everyone else that Maro Itoje and Dan Carter are good is one thing. Finding someone that almost no one knows is something else. With Vincent Martin, Elliott Dixon and James Cronin, we didn’t do too badly, in the end.”
Should the Pro D2 formula be changed in order to allow graduates to arm themselves and recruit, several months before reaching the Top 14? “Sure. This is something I have been campaigning for four years for. I remember a time when the first went straight up; it had allowed Lyon or Racing to recruit in office and to approach the Top 14 in good conditions. Such a system would eliminate the final stages as we know them today.”
