Top 14: Bourgoin president Flamand resigns as merger with Lyon OU draws ever nearer

The DNACG – the league’s financial watchdog – took action after Bourgoin failed to secure guarantees to honour their proposed €10.2m budget for the season. That left the club unable to field any of their close-season signings – such as Alberto Di Bernardo and Albert Vuli Vuli – or players who had had extended their contracts in the summer.

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As a result they were not even able to fill their full compliment of seven substitutes and eventually lost 28-37 to Clermont despite defying the odds to lead 23-16 with half an hour to go.

The DNACG’s sanctions follow previous warnings about budgetary shortfalls at the end of last season, when a €2m hole almost cost them relegation to ProD2.

Now it has emerged that Flamand submitted his resignation on Friday ahead of a hoped-for takeover of the financially stricken club.

Interim president and committee member Jean-Louis Regairaz told L’Equipe that matters were moving fast. “When René Flamand took the presidency of CSBJ [Bourgoin] on February 16^th he made it clear he would perform this function only until new owners arrive.”

It has been widely reported in the French press over the weekend that Olivier Ginon is the man waiting to acquire the club. Ginon is president of GL Events and already a shareholder of ProD2 side Lyon OU, paving the way for a probable merger between the two clubs at the end of the current season.

“The club should be clarified in the coming days and we will explain to the players on Monday morning,” Regairaz told AFP.

It is an unseemly mess for the European Challenge Cup finalists and one has to wonder why this was not resolved during the summer break. Coaches Eric Catinot and Xavier Pemeja instead had to contend with taking on Top 14 runners-up Clermont handicapped by the loss of 14 squad members in their opening fixture, having already been deprived of international starlets Morgan Parra and Yann David – following their summer departures to Clermont and Stade Toulousain respectively.

But Bourgoin weren’t the only club to fall foul of the DNACG before the weekend’s opening fixtures, with Montauban also denied the use of six players as they await approval from the Ligue Nationale de Rugby (LNR). The lack of official paperwork meant Emmanuel Etien, Mirko Lozupone, Alejandro Campos, Joel Koffi, Maxime Le Bourhis and Scotland’s Andrew Henderson all had to sit out the last-ditch home defeat by Stade Toulousain.

The two clubs’ plights – Bourgoin and Montauban – made the post-match complaints of Stade Toulousain coach Guy Noves almost seem churlish. Certainly the veteran coach will evoke little sympathy from the smaller Top 14 clubs for his moans about not having a clutch of international players available due to the enforced eight-week rest period between seasons.

Noves claimed the rule, together with a freakish run of injuries to his prospective fly-halves, had forced him to field an already injured Frédéric Michalak at No 10. The gamble unsurprisingly backfired, with Michalak hobbling off after just 20 minutes clutching his injured left hamstring.

The statutory rest period was introduced to afford players essential recovery time after an arduous season, but Top 14 has started two weeks earlier this season – leading to many clubs being deprived of players at the weekend who were on summer international duty.

While it is laudable that players are given sufficient recovery time to rest their weary bodies, it is also undeniable that clubs boasting the most internationals – such as Stades Toulousain and Francais – were hit hardest.

Still, the former were still able to field a starting backline of outstanding quality including likes of Byron Kelleher, Michalak, Yannick Jauzion, Clément Poitrenaud, Yves Donguy and David.