THE FRENCH CONNECTION
Sydney Morning Herald
Thursday February 4, 2010
When French rugby union clubs started signing National Rugby League stars there were fears it would destroy the Australian code. Sport&Style investigates.Craig Gower has been playing footy of some form since he was seven, growing up in the rough-and-tumble western suburbs of Sydney. He's now 31, an age when you'd think there was little he hadn't copped on the field. Yet playing rugby union in France for Bayonne still affords the former Penrith Panthers rugby league star new experiences. "I got my first eye gouge the other day, against Brive,'' Gower says nonchalantly, sitting outside a beach cafe on an unseasonably warm Biarritz day."I was in a ruck and I felt [a] finger in my eye. Of course, I got up and started throwing them and I got sent to the sin bin for it. Anyway, at half-time one of the coaches punched on."Punched on?"One of the players pushed the coach and another coach came in and threw a punch and there it was, a fight involving players and coaches in the tunnel!"Little fuss was made about the backroom brawl because it largely remained a secret. But the eye gouge? Well, that was on television. "We went to the tribunal," Gower says. "I had marks on my eyelid that showed I was gouged. As part of their defence, they said, 'That is not an eye gouge.' Then they showed video of one of our players sticking his fingers in someone's eyes in another game! The bloke who eye gouged me got 10 days and the club was fined 20,000 euros."But while French rugby union has had a reputation as the Wild West of the sporting world - with gunslingers like the aptly named Sonny Bill Williams lured to the Gallic wilds with promises of gold, only to find themselves surrounded by rampant lawlessness - things are slowly getting better. "Generally, it is more professional over here than it used to be," adds Gower, sipping on his coffee.More importantly, the money is good - a significant lure for National Rugby League players whose wages have been artificially depressed by a salary cap.But a different sport in a different country with a different language and culture? How did it come to that?Five years ago, Pierre Vandome was living somewhere even sunnier than Biarritz - New Caledonia - trying to start rugby league there. Born in the shadows of the Pyrenees, the now-50-year-old had lived the life of a sporting adventurer, playing bush rugby league for Orange CYMS in central-west NSW and doing time as a travel agent and international middleman for league players and officials.Surveying the scene in tropical Noumea, he was happy where life had taken him and felt he may have actually reached his destination. "We had done good things with rugby league there," says the personable Vandome, in Aussie-accented English. "We had a thousand players, we had tours coming in and going out."Vandome looked set to cement a place in league history for starting the game in a new country. But New Caledonia was not to be the place to secure his treiziste immortality."The French [rugby league] federation decided to stop funding all development in New Caledonia. It was a political decision; it was very, very disappointing. Everything we had built up was gone."Then Vandome, who had been bringing rugby league players from France to Australia and vice versa for 25 years, was approached by his friend Gower. Gower asked for his help to find a rugby union club in France, and Vandome found himself having to choose between his league loyalty and his friendship with Gower. He decided to help his friend. From here, it would be easy to develop a portrait of a man embittered by rugby league's small mindedness who later helped deliver the likes of Gower and fellow NRL stars Mark Gasnier, Sonny Bill Williams, Karmichael Hunt and Luke Rooney to French union.But Vandome - who insists he had no involvement in the Gasnier or Williams deals, "although my name got mentioned" - is aware of how inviting that vengeful caricature is to reporters. "Please make sure you put in your story how I have helped 250 players go to rugby league clubs in France. "I have been criticised by French league officials who have not done 10 per cent of what I have done for the game. Rugby league is my game and always will be."But rugby union is a much bigger market in France, and if someone who is your friend asks you to help them, do you say no because it is rugby union? These are men are looking for a job. I try to help them get a job. That is all."Vandome is no traitor to his code. Instead, league is merely a victim of the fact its players have skills that now have value in places where the game itself has none.Like Vandome, Gower is also the subject of a convenient theory for the reason he left rugby league's embrace. "People say it was to escape the media," he says, after ambling down to meet me from the beachside apartment he shares with his partner, Amanda Flynn.Gower attracted plenty of publicity of the wrong kind during his rugby league career. He was infamously kicked out of the Australian team for flashing at an Irish backpacker in a Sydney hotel in 1999, then sacked as Penrith captain after misbehaving at a charity golf event in late 2005.So he wasn't running away from media scrutiny? "Not really," he says. "I was already going down that track when the NRL stopped me going to Italy to play rugby union for a short stint. Rugby league is basically a NSW and Queensland sport, whereas rugby is worldwide - although obviously it's not as big as soccer. You compare the Rugby World Cup with the Rugby League World Cup - the latter doesn't measure up. That's not bagging rugby league, that's just a fact."Gower says that he may have stayed in rugby league if he had been allowed to spend an off season in union. But NRL chief executive David Gallop says no business would loan staff to a competitor and has no regrets."Investment in these players starts at such a young age that it wouldn't be prudent business to risk our assets getting injured in a rival code," Gallop says.Should that change to stop players defecting to rugby union? Says Gower: "It depends if they want to keep players in the game. With the NRL salary cap the way it is, if you can let players go to rugby union and still come back to league, then you can keep them in league."League officials point out that the players association is always complaining about the "wear and tear" issue - but stars want to earn a quick buck by playing back-to-back seasons in two different sports.Karmichael Hunt is about to play three sports in four years. "I think the main thing for players is that it's mental," says the man switching from Test fullback in rugby league to Gold Coast AFL footballer, via a short union stint in France. "I don't know if I could play back-to-back rugby league seasons because, all year round, it would be the same drills, the same exercises, the same game. "That would mentally tire me and mentally wear me out and once your mind starts to get tired, physically you'll start to deteriorate as well. Whereas over here, I'm playing a different code in a different environment ... and a whole lot has changed training-wise, so mentally it's exciting. It's a fresh concept and it's something that hasn't yet drained me."When Sonny Bill Williams abruptly walked out on the Bulldogs mid-season in 2008 it seemed, initially, as if the sky had fallen in on the rugby league world.While Australians take it for granted that their soccer players will go overseas to make money, and understand why some league stars move to the English Super League and its offers of big contracts in British pounds, having a superstar like Williams move to France to play "the other code" was something else entirely."Sonny's different," Gower says now. "I wouldn't leave half-way through a season. But he's paid his way, bought his way out of it and given the Bulldogs what they wanted [Williams had to pay the Bulldogs club $750,000 to release him from his five-year contract], so good luck to him."Everyone talks about loyalty but I think loyalty's dead. You see clubs cutting players who are under contract. You have a limited life in the game. People ridiculing you for trying something different? What's their motivation?"Fear, probably. And it's not just rugby union in France. The country's top professional rugby league club, Catalans Dragons, which plays in the English Super League, has signed up NRL stars such as Stacey Jones, Greg Bird, Jason Ryles, Jason Croker and Adam Mogg. Interestingly, while most of these men head to France for the money, they often find other charms when they arrive. France's current league Test halfback, the former Illawarra and Newcastle lower grader James Wynne, once told me: "It's far more relaxed. The bread goes hard by 5pm because it isn't full of preservatives, people have a ham hanging up in their kitchen and still buy fresh produce from an open-air market and not a convenience store. It's a great experience."Training, too, is "a lot different", says Hunt. "They're a lot more relaxed compared to professional rugby league back home. It's such a full-time job back in Australia. It's nice experiencing something a bit more relaxing after the last six years at the Brisbane Broncos."But the view after the Williams defection that there was a strong risk of a mass exodus of NRL players to France has gone. Rugby union in France will not kill rugby league in Australia. French rugby union couldn't kill rugby league in France even when union authorities collaborated with the Nazis and the Vichy regime to shut down league during World War II."You're only allowed two international players in France and I can't really see any club using up one of those places with a rugby league player," Gower says. "Gaz [Mark Gasnier] was only taken by [Paris rugby union club] Stade Franaise because of Ewen [McKenzie, its then Australian coach]. I think sometimes players are just trying to get more cash [for their NRL contracts]. They say, 'Oh, French rugby are keen'. It's just something for their managers to put in the paper, to drive figures up."But Gower, for one, has embraced his unlikely sea change wholeheartedly. He has played rugby union for Italy (he has an Italian grandfather).One question brings an instant answer. Does he miss home? "Not at all. I go home and everyone's doing the same thing."I never thought I'd leave Penrith ... but I've had mates come and visit and once they see the place, they understand why I did what I did."He even understands why players get eye gouged. "I dropped the ball," he says philosophically. "So I suppose that's why they do it."
© 2010 Sydney Morning Herald
