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The two factors that convinced Huw Jones to turn down France move

By PA
(Photo by Stu Forster/Getty Images)

Scotland centre Huw Jones revealed he was “tempted” by the prospect of a move to France but he ultimately felt that remaining with buoyant Glasgow was the right decision for his career overall.

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The on-form 30-year-old was the subject of recent interest from Top 14 side Montpellier and was also linked with Bayonne.

However, he ended speculation about his future last week by signing a new two-year deal to commit his future to Warriors until 2026.

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Former Fiji coach Simon Raiwalui chats about his new role as High Performance Pathways and Player Development Manager at World Rugby.

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Simon Raiwalui on what his new role with World Rugby entails

Former Fiji coach Simon Raiwalui chats about his new role as High Performance Pathways and Player Development Manager at World Rugby.

Jones, whose partner is expecting a baby at the start of April, admitted the prospect of following Scotland colleagues Blair Kinghorn and Ben White to France did hold some appeal.

“I’ve said in the past that I’d be open to a move to France, so, yeah, it was certainly tempting,” he said, speaking from the Scotland camp ahead of Saturday’s Guinness Six Nations match away to Italy.

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“Like you do with all big decisions, you’ve got to weigh up the pros and cons and all that and I think when it came down to it, it was a rugby decision.

“I thought it would be a shame to pass up what’s happening at Glasgow at the moment. I think since (head coach) Franco (Smith) came in, since I came back to the club (from Harlequins in 2022), I’ve seen a real growth in the squad.

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“The way we train, the way we play, I think we’re getting better and better. I think we’ve got a real momentum at the moment and I want to stay part of that.

“We’ve obviously got a baby on the way in the next couple of weeks, we’re pretty settled in Glasgow, we’ve got loads of friends around and my family live just outside Edinburgh, so it’s nice to be staying put.”

Jones will be without his trusty centre partner Sione Tuipulotu for the remainder of the Six Nations after his Glasgow team-mate sustained a knee injury in the win over England a week past Saturday.

Bath’s Cam Redpath is expected to slot in alongside Jones in Rome, although Glasgow’s Stafford McDowall and Northampton’s Rory Hutchinson are other contenders.

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“I think we’ve got great depth throughout the squad but definitely at centre,” said Jones.

“I’m gutted for my mate (Sione), but Cam, Hutch and Staff are all really good players. They’ve all played well this season and I think we’re blessed in that position right now.

“Losing Sione isn’t great but with the guys who are able to step up, we can have confidence in them.”

Scotland have won two of their opening three championship matches but their controversial home defeat by France – when they were denied what appeared to be a legitimate late match-winning try – has left them with only a slim chance of catching leaders Ireland over the course of the last two matches.

A rare second-place finish still appears to be well within their grasp, however.

“If Ireland take it out of our hands (by beating England on Saturday), so be it,” said Jones. “We’ve got to focus on what we can control and this weekend we’ve got a massive game, Italy away. They’ll be up for it, they’ve improved.

“Last season was a close game against them and we were at home.

“They’re a threat to what we want to achieve so we’ve got to go there with the mindset of putting together our best performance of the championship so far.

“Against Wales, we just had a good first half and probably the last five minutes. France, again, we probably could have managed it better.

“England was a positive step forward but I think we should be looking to have our best performance now because we’re going to need it.”

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J
JW 2 hours ago
Does South Africa have a future in European competition?

I rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.


He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.


The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).


The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.


The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).


It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.

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