Ollie Phillips column: 'I'm gutted to miss out for England, but my first loyalty is to Stade'

By Ollie Phillips, 22 May 2010

The season may be over as far as Stade Francais are concerned – indeed, it finished two weeks ago - but until Friday I thought I still had a few games left to play, but this time for England’s sevens team. Unfortunately that opportunity to play a couple of IRB tournaments, including this weekend at Twickenham, has now been taken away from me due to an ongoing player-release dispute in France. Essentially it involved four players who were not released by their clubs to play for the France sevens team, and who have now been dropped from the full French side to tour South Africa and Argentina this summer.

It didn’t really have anything to do with me, but with the clubs hardening their stance after the four players were dropped I have now been told by Stade Francais that I can’t play over the next two weekends either.

It is extremely frustrating, because I love playing for my country and I think it is the highest honour you can have as a sports professional, but at the same time I have to stress that my first loyalty at the moment is to my club, especially as Stade Francais have been so good to me.

The move to France has been superb for me both on and off the pitch, and Stade have really helped me to develop my game in the 15-man format, something that I was desperate to do. The president Max Guazzini has also been very supportive of me and we have an excellent relationship, and I understand that this episode is just one of those things that sometimes happen in sport.

'I would never do anything to jeopardise my club career with Stade'

Yes, I would love to be running out to represent my country, but also I would never do anything to jeopardise my club career with Stade as I hope to be playing for them for many years to come.

I still obviously hope that England can repeat last year’s home win – although perhaps before sudden death extra time – and otherwise I can now relax for a couple of weeks before we go back to pre-season training on June 15^th.

So, after some hectic discussions over the last 48 hours, I now find that my rugby playing is over for the 2009/10 season – and what an amazing season it has been. Results didn’t quite go as planned at Stade Francais and we’ve rightly copped a bit of flak for this season’s performances because we certainly let ourselves down on the pitch. Finishing eighth isn’t what we had in mind at the beginning of the year, but there’s nothing we can do about that now. That’s part of the reason why the players recently agreed to take a 3% wage cut.

It was just a sort of donation from the players really, to hold our hands up as well and acknowledge there is an economic crisis and we’re not absolved from that. We are responsible for results and we haven’t really helped the club by not qualifying for the Heineken Cup. So, it was a team gesture to Max Guazzini [club president], to the club and to Michael Cheika and everyone else coming in, because we are players who genuinely want to play for Stade and genuinely want to go and win things.

You may have read that the French press made a bit of a meal about who did and who didn’t agree to the wage cut but all I can say is that I for one haven’t objected and said I would happily do it. I also think that when it comes to salaries you are not offering a cup of tea, or something like that, and you can’t dictate who does and who doesn’t. When it comes to your own personal salary it has to come to your own personal decision as to whether or not you want to do that, and I think that has to be kept private. Whatever each player decides he decides, and at the end of the day it’s all about winning rugby games.

That’s something we want to be doing a lot more of next season, and while 2009/10 didn’t go quite according to plan at least I managed to sign off with two tries in our final league game against Racing-Metro 92.

It had been a frustrating second half to the season up to then because after Christmas I was injured for three months and then I just couldn’t get a game. I played against Toulouse and I had a bit of a shocker – well, collectively we had a bit of a shocker - and then I never managed to play again after that, so it was pretty frustrating. I finally got my chance against Racing and although it may not have had massive importance in terms of league positions it was still a Paris derby and both teams were pretty intent on winning it, so it was quite nice to get the nod. So, winning was good, especially by such a large margin, and I also scored two tries, which was a sort of rubber-stamping of what I’d advocated to the coach - because I’d said to him ‘if you play me that’s what I’ll do’ and it was nice to come through on the promise.

Amazing first season

Looking back it’s been an amazing first season in France and I still can’t believe it sometimes when I’m wondering around Paris – it’s just such an amazing place to live and work. There’s so much going on. From an aesthetic point of view it’s such a beautiful city, and there’s an elegance about it  that I think is unrivalled. It’s such a large city, but a small city at the same time. It’s nothing like London in terms of size, so you can nip around it and be in and out of the city within 20-30 minutes, and that gives it such personality.

There’s not many places in the world you can wonder down somewhere like the Champs Elysees, or find yourself in the Place de Concorde or the Louvre. It’s all pretty impressive and from that perspective it’s been a really enjoyable move. I love the whole culture that comes with being in France - the social coffee culture, the long lunches and stuff - it all sort of mingles into quite a nice experience. All we need to do now is improve our results on the pitch!

There’s obviously going to be some changes at the club for next season, most notably with Michael Cheika coming in as the new head coach, and there’s also been some players who have left, including Italian winger Mirco Bergamasco. Although it’s sad to see Mirco go - because he’s been a long-standing servant to the club, he’s a nice guy and he’s a really good player – it could also mean from a personal perspective that maybe I’ll be playing a lot more games next year. That’s my challenge anyway, to play a lot more games than I had, because I think this year I started 10 games and scored nine times, which isn’t too shabby.

I just want to be start more games if I can because I think French rugby on the whole is brilliant, the experience is just amazing. I’ve even been to a couple of games where Stade haven’t been playing as well – I went to watch Toulon play Perpignan in Marseille and the atmosphere there was just incredible with 60,000, especially when they did their famous ‘Pilou, Pilou’ just before kick off. I think all these rituals are brilliant because they make it such a special experience, and that’s what it’s all about. That’s what you play for as a player - the experience and memories - because you can’t do it for ever.

From a personal perspective I think my favourite game to play in was probably against Clermont Auvergne away, because it was a great game to be involved with and the atmosphere was amazing. We looked set to win it and we drew it 19-19 in the end, which was a bit of a disappointment, but I don’t think anybody thought we were going to do that with the team we sent down there. That was a definite highlight for me – I even managed a late try - and it was a great experience, but all the grounds across France are brilliant. When we played Toulouse down there in the football stadium that was a special atmosphere, and the Stade de France games with 80,000 people is always a great occasion and you can’t really rival that.

In fact the whole experience has been brilliant, but it’s been a topsy-turvy year for us at Stade. There was all the excitement and everything I had coming in, playing for Stade, and learning a new language on the field and off it. We might have had an indifferent season, not really achieving what we should have, but now we’ve got a new coach who’s got a proven track record with Leinster and hopefully he can settle the ship. So, everything’s looking pretty positive for us next year.

Previous columns:
'We're not broke, and we still think we can win the Heineken Cup'
Snow, injuries and playing away - all in a day's work at Stade

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