Top 14: Brive tell Riki Flutey to stay put (sort of); Perpignan rage against the LNR machine

12 March 2010

Brive CEO Simon Gillham has reiterated that want-away England centre Riki Flutey will remain at the Limousin club next season.

Flutey, 30, has been heavily linked with a summer move away – to either Munster or his former club London Wasps – but Gillham insists that the Kiwi-born player will remain in France. “He is under contract until June 2011,” he stressed.

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Gillham’s unequivocal stance follows a report in London’s Evening Standard paper earlier this week which claimed Flutey had agreed to rejoin Wasps. It said the London club had found extra cash to finance the deal after seeing fly-half Danny Cipriani sign for Melbourne Rebels.

But Brive appear either unwilling to let Flutey leave, or are holding out for a significant transfer fee to help offset the loss. “I have not received any offer for Riki,” Gillham told La Montagne. “If we are offered a million euros to buy out his last year, we would think about it,” he added.

Previously it had been reported in the French press that Flutey had signed a two-year deal to join Munster, but that too has been denied by Gillham.

One thing that is certain is that Flutey appears to be trying to engineer his way out of the last year of his two-year deal with Brive, where he has made just four appearances this season due to a combination of injury and international duty.

The player is reportedly unhappy with the direction and results of Brive this season, with the Limousin club looking likely to miss out on both the end-of-season play-offs and next season’s Heineken Cup.

He was also said to be unhappy that the club allowed fellow England international Andy Goode to leave, while the club itself wasn’t exactly enamoured that Flutey wasn’t released by England for last weekend’s 35-10 defeat at Castres.

It seems we have not heard the last of this matter.

Another overseas star weighing up his future is Toulon’s Sonny Bill Williams. The New Zealand-born centre is coming to the end of his two-year contract at the Cote d’Azur club and has been rumoured to be considering a return home to try and force his way into the All Blacks’ World Cup squad.

But Toulon president Mourad Boudjellal this week said he hoped to get Williams to agree a new deal with the club shortly. “We want to keep him, but on a lower salary,” he told L’Equipe.

The rugby league convert controversially walked out on Australian NRL side Bulldogs to take up a lucrative offer with Toulon, rumoured to be worth €350,000 per season.

Top 14 champions Perpignan are up in arms after back rower Grégory Le Corvec was suspended for an alleged incident of eye-gouging, despite the player and club both insisting he is innocent.

Le Corvec has been suspended by the LNR pending their official hearing into the incident on March 24, but Perpignan claim that is pre-judging the player as guilty before trial.

Le Corvec was cited after last weekend’s defeat at Clermont Auvergne for allegedly making contact with the eye area of Clermont’s Canadian lock Jamie Cudmore. The Perpignan player admits putting his hand in Cudmore’s face but denies any direct contact with his eyes.

“We have the direct impression we are not being treated as other teams,” said Perpignan president Paul Goze. “I say now we have had enough. If it is upsetting that Perpignan is the champion of France, we should be told so.

“We shall obviously defend Gregory with whatever means at our disposal and we shall make public the video evidence which the citing commissioner refuses to look at. We will use every means in our power to fight against this farce and the bias involved even it means going to court to be heard,” he added in an echo of the way they rallied around Romanian hooker Marius Tincu last season.

Clermont didn’t emerge from the match unscathed either, with gnarled Argentine prop Martin Scelzo being ruled out for a month after breaking his hand. The 34-year-old has already undergone an operation and now looks certain to miss Clermont’s Heineken Cup quarter-final away to defending champions Leinster.

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