Top 14: 'No club has approached us
about Riki Flutey,' says Brive CEO Simon Gillham
24 March 2010
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Centre of attention: Brive
and England's Riki Flutey
Photo: Michael Paler |
Brive
CEO Simon Gillham has denied that either Munster or
London Wasps has contacted the French club with a view to
signing England centre Riki Flutey.
Reports
of
Flutey’s imminent departure have been
doing the rounds for weeks now, but Gillham said
that as far as he was concerned the England centre would
remain at Brive next season to see out the final year of his
contract.
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Flutey,
30, has only played four matches for Brive since signing
last summer – due to injury and international calls – and
has been widely reported as being unsettled at the French
club.
Brive
are currently pushing to try and secure the final top six
slot in Top 14, but as things stand would miss out on the
play-offs and qualification for next season’s Heineken Cup.
But
Gillham – in an interview with The Daily Telegraph -
insisted that the player has not expressed any desire to
leave.
“I keep
getting calls about Riki Flutey joining Wasps or Munster but
we have not spoken to either club,” he said. “If anyone is
interested in Riki they have to get in touch with me because
he has a year on his contract. No one has done so.
Everything that has been written is speculation and I have
never mentioned a transfer fee,” added Gillham.
His
latest comments will ensure the long-running saga still
remains open as he refused to rule out the possibility of
Flutey leaving.
“We have not seen him for eight weeks because
he has been with England. I do not know where stories that
we want to get rid of him have come from and I do not want
to have a public conversation about his future. If he is
unhappy at Brive and does not want to stay that would be a
matter for the club and the player to discuss privately,”
said Gillham.
In a
separate incident the Federation Francais de Rugby (FFR) has
explained that it withdrew Saturday’s match programme for
the France-England clash due to an uncomplimentary article
about Flutey.
According to a report in The Daily Telegraph FFR
president Pierre Camou pulled the programme – at an
estimated loss of £220,000 – because the article drew
attention to an incident in Flutey’s past when he was
charged with assaulting an 18-year-old student in Argentina
while on tour with Wellington Academy in 2001.
The
long-running case saw Flutey spend four nights in jail at
the time and was only settled in December 2008 when the
charges were finally dropped.
An FFR
spokesman confirmed that Camou had ordered the programme be
withdrawn because “when we host someone in France we want to
welcome them and not tell a story of their life in the
past”.
He
added: “When a player comes to France we do not care what he
did before. We want him to play a good game. It was a brave
decision because we lost a big amount of money because of
the lack of sales, but we prefer to keep very good relations
with the RFU instead of trying to make a few euros from
selling match programmes.”
Leinster
are hoping that Irish international centres Brian O’Driscoll
and Gordon D’Arcy will both be fit for the club’s Heineken
Cup quarter-final against Clermont Auvergne, on April 9.
The duo
were both injured in Ireland’s home defeat by Scotland but
head coach Michael Cheika believes that O’Driscoll (medial
ligament strain) and D’Arcy (groin strain) could both be fit
in time to help his team’s Heineken Cup defence.
There was not such good
news for Llanelli Scarlets though - who face a daunting trip
to Toulon in the Amlin Challenge Cup – with head coach Nigel
Davies confirming that captain Mark Jones and fullback
Morgan Stoddart had both been sidelined for the rest of the
season. Simon Easterby (broken finger) will also miss the
quarter-final showdown with Toulon.
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