Northern Edition

Select Edition

Northern Northern
Southern Southern
Global Global
New Zealand New Zealand
France France

Rivals hope to pounce as Courtney Lawes to Brive deal not fully done

Ex-England skipper Courtney Lawes (Photo by David Rogers/Getty Images)

Provence haven’t given up hope that they could win the race to sign former England captain Courtney Lawes despite recent reports that Pro D2 promotion rivals Brive had emerged as the favourites to land him for the 2024/25 season.

ADVERTISEMENT

The 34-year-old Lawes, who won 105 Test caps with England, retired from international rugby after the recent Rugby World Cup in France and is out of contract with Northampton Saints at the end of this season.

It is widely known that he has accepted an offer worth around €35,000 a month from Brive, who are hanging onto the last of six Top 14 promotion play-off places by their fingertips.

Video Spacer

Stuart Lancaster discusses Owen Farrell’s move to Racing 92

Video Spacer

Stuart Lancaster discusses Owen Farrell’s move to Racing 92

But it is understood that he is still waiting for the contract so he can complete the move, while Saints have also made him an offer to remain at Franklin’s Gardens for the rest of his career.

Brive’s package, which is huge by their standards, is the highest, while Provence, who are neck and neck with Vannes at the top of the tier-two table in France, have offered €23,000-a-month plus private school fees for Lawes’ children.

Related

Lawes last year turned his back on the chance to move to France and instead extend his 17-year stay at Northampton for the 2023/24 campaign, but he is blunt now about doing what is best for his family.

“This will probably be my last contract,” he said recently. “You have got to do what is best for your family. I took a decent pay cut last year to stay here because I wasn’t happy with leaving on a season like that. I have got to be paid what I’m worth. I’m very hopeful that it will work out.”

ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT

LIVE

{{item.title}}

Trending on RugbyPass

Comments

6 Comments
T
Timmyboy 275 days ago

It’s just boring now. There comes a point where we have to pull the offer and move on our terms. One injury and that’s him done.

Not worth it when we have young English talent to hold onto as their wages go up from international experience over the next few years. He’s choosing a few extra quid and uprooting his family over retiring a one club legend.

Personally don’t get it and it’s not like he’s living in poverty is it. We have plenty of back row options let’s just move on.

Load More Comments

Join free and tell us what you really think!

Sign up for free
ADVERTISEMENT

Latest Features

Comments on RugbyPass

T
Tom 3 hours ago
Borthwick, it's time to own up – Andy Goode

The problem for me isn't the pragmatic playstyle, it's that there is no attacking gameplan whatsoever.


I've got no issue with a methodical, kick heavy, defense centric gameplan. That playstyle won England our only world cup and it's won SA 4 of them. However! You can play in a pragmatic manner but you have to still play heads-up rugby and have the ability to turn it on when you manufacture prime attacking situations. England work very hard to get in the right areas of the pitch and have no idea how to convert when they get there, hence we tried and missed 3 drop goals as we were completely impotent in the 22. I've not seen any improvement in our attack in the last 4-5 years. The only time we got close to the tryline was from an interception, it's embarrassing. I don't know what Richard Wigglesworth is getting paid for.


I agree that England should have found a way to close out that game. Being able to grind out tough games is critical but I'd argue that being unable to string more than a couple of passes together without dropping it and finding a way to get over the gainline is even more important... But frustratingly, they don't seem interested. All you hear is about how close we are to bring a great team, we just need to execute a bit better. I don't see it. I see a team who are very physical, very pragmatic who do some stuff really well and are useless with the ball in hand which adds up to a very average side. They need to stop focusing on getting 5% better at the stuff we're already at an 8/10 level and focus on getting a lot better at the stuff we're doing at a 2/10 level. We have the worst attack of pretty much any side in the world... Argentina, Scotland, Fiji are way more threatening.

23 Go to comments
LONG READ
LONG READ Mutual regard makes way for enmity as the flames of a very modern rivalry are fanned Mutual regard makes way for enmity as the flames of a very modern rivalry are fanned
Search