France eyes another All Black - Toulon targetting Tawera Kerr-Barlow

Sadly true - I would love to see French rugby flourish yet despite the money and big names top 14 for the most part is truly dire bogged down dull, dull rugby. I can't imagine players going over for the love of rugby..

Agree Ebop, just like the EPL does. A transfer system would allow the NZRU to use money gained from some transfers to fund keeping other players. It would be as simple as every Club registration having a clause saying NZRU owns your transfer $$ but not the player

Im more respectful than you guys. I call him mister Mouse

Well I have a couple of chants already organised. "What do we want?" "Time travel" "When do we want it?" "Irrelevant"

very true

He could play rugby Loig with the WORRIERS and stay in niw zulland. .But he wouldn't want to associate himself with those massive losers id suspect....

Sounds good ebop and as taylorman points out, the system that has nurtured the talent gets paid for its contribution!

Excellent idea taylorman and perhaps the value that needs to be paid increases significantly with the players years in the NZRU system.

my sons are eligible to play for Samoa and NZ. was talking to my older son about playing for the ABs and i pointed out that he can go overseas make much much more money and still play international rugby for manuSamoa. he loves the ABs, as do I, but that is an option. luckily he also loves living in NZ and rugby is the only sport here where he can be successful at it and still stay in NZ.

for the good of french rugby this has to stop. its cool for NZ players making big money but its ruining french rugby. IMO if this continues France will never be a rugby power ever again.

Should sign every professional NZ rugby player up to a 10 year contract with nudge-nudge-wink-wink clauses so foreign clubs have to pay out contracts to NZR. That's the thing that really grates is that suppliers get zilch in return under the current system. It's an absolute wind up.

Just continues to show the lack of quality in rhe north. NZRFU should take a large cut on rhese guys and force the prices even higher. I dont know what the deal is currently. Its simple supply and demand and at the moment NZ had an oversupply. The prices might cause less take up and affect players chances but it is the NZRFU that is creating the supply in the first place. Overseas rugby players are no longer feeding back into the NZ game or generally as a NZ based players would.

I know you can't accept it south of the equator but the best style of rugby in the world is the traditional French game, when it is played as it should be and as the French liked to play it. A la main, running from everywhere, throwing the ball around like the Harlem Globetrotters and scoring the sort of tries that stay in the memory for years. Over the past decade, however, the French have preferred to invest in bulk and power, with the result that their great natural game has decayed and frequently, the most interesting spectacle while a French team is playing is to watch the grass grow. I don't think this is necessarily good for French rugby, however good it might be for Toulon. The big French clubs have been splashing the cash and buying up loads of SH talent but with the exception of Toulon, who have ridiculous wonga to spend, and have cast the net further than the South Pacific, the results haven't been too stellar. The French team has, in recent years, lost its heart and French rugby is in danger of losing its soul. A case in point was Montpellier who came to play Leinster in Dublin in the European Cup a few weeks ago. Only three of the starting line up were French, and one of those was born in Burkina Faso. The average weight of the Montpellier BACKS was just shy of 102kg (That's 224 lbs or 16stone in old money) By contrast the Leinster backs average 93kg (204lbs or 13.5stone) That's a weight difference of 9kgs PER MAN. And how did the Montpellier backline of two Frenchmen, two Fijians, two Australians and a South African fare against their punier pasty-faced opposition (all Irish with the exception of New Zealand born one-capped Fijian wonder Isa Nacewa)? Played off the park and thumped 57-3. The French import preference is not for brilliant ball-playing running passing islanders. The presumption is that if that's what they wanted they are much better at that sort of thing themselves. Instead they bring in big bruising Maori sidesteppers and South African wildebeests, as well as a fair smattering of muscular Georgians to bulk out their packs. They are importing exotica,not substitutes for their home-grown players. I suspect this is because the attritional nature of their club competition, the top 14, lends itself to a requirement for bulk rather than guile. This, sadly, is filtering through to the French national side which has been a shadow of its great former self for some years now. but there may be some light on the horizon. France has finally given the coaching job to Guy Noves, formerly of Toulouse which is the only club to have won the European Cup four times, although the last one was some time ago. He is a believer in traditional French flair and has stated that he wants France to return to what they have always been able to do better than anyone else. Whether he can turn the bad habits of hte last decade around in a season has yet to be seen. But any lover of real rugby would wish him well. Toujours l'audace!!!

He may as well go - Now Pulu has gone to the blues and will receive regular game time TKB will be surpassed and end at no. 4 in the AB's pecking order. It would be a shame to see him go from the Chiefs but Webber seems plenty capable

If I could have said it better Sam I would've , but I cannot.

Who the hell is 'mickey'? And what position does he hold when he's holding it?

One of the reasons for the success of the All Blacks is that the players are selected exclusively from the NZ Super Rugby sides. Those sides are directly and indirectly influenced by the All Blacks coaches and selectors in regards to player development areas, tactics, systems, succession planning, etc. That becomes much harder with players based offshore, because of course they are not then subject to those influences. It's one of the key reasons why a player must play their rugby in NZ in order to be selected for the All Blacks. As well, keeping the best players in NZ has a range of other benefits including the quality of the spectacle presented to fans there (with knock-on benefits in regards to ticket and merchandise sales, new players/coaches joining the game, etc), the intensity of competition for starting and bench places, and so on. At some point, there may be so much financial pressure from the north that NZ policy on these things would need to change. If the workings for a true global season can be agreed upon, perhaps we will see an arrangement whereby club rugby is played in Europe by the world's best players who then return to play for their countries in the test windows. Perhaps that could be made to work, something like soccer/football. Or perhaps a global club championship between the very best clubs in both hemispheres could be organised at the end of the "global club season"? Ironically, in light of my first point in this post, the dilution of the NZ-based player talent could in the very long term mean that the kiwi players become less valuable to the northern clubs, precisely because the intensity of the NZ competition has been diluted by the loss of players offshore. Would Beauden Barrett be the player he is today without the pressure on his starting jersey that Aaron Cruden provided? As a hypothetical, what if Sopoaga was also off to Europe? An interesting 5-10 years ahead for the global game...

Ok Your non-mickey taking is noted Thnx

Jacko - Sadly European clubs would just look at NZ and the PI as a convenient production line. Imagine the choice of possible national selection (a guarantee is impossible) or guaranteed salary of up to $1m per season (plus endorsements). I don't care what country someone is from, they'd be a fool to turn down an opportunity to guarantee their family's security for generations.

ebop - how the sentence sounded in your head was not how it read on the screen. Just to clarify, this comment is an observation and not taking the mickey.