Making a diagnosis matters; finding the right cure is essential. Rugby and health: a vast subject, and vast debates. But what exactly are we talking about? The financial health of clubs (professional and amateur), the health of players (concussions, assorted traumas, depression, and so on), and standards of behaviour (alcohol and the problems that come with it, violence of every kind, whether in private life or on the pitch). This is not about putting anyone on trial. It is about looking the problems in the face and fixing them, preventing them, treating them, supporting people.

That is the job of the good Samaritans, whether institutional (management-control assistance, medical practitioners, players’ unions and so on), structural (within leagues, regional committees and clubs) and, of course, private, with those remarkable volunteers.

Opus 1/4: the watchdogs, A2R (ex-DNACG)

When the Ligue Nationale de Rugby was created at the instigation of sports minister Marie-George Buffet, quite a few of the 24 clubs on that original list dropped off the professional radar, others burned their wings, and the rest suffered from rugby’s drift towards the big cities: Istres, Rumilly, Périgueux, Nice, Gaillac, Narbonne, Bourgoin-Jallieu, Saint-Étienne.

In the 1980s, the clubs leading their pools in Groupe A and B were La Voulte, Béziers, Saliès, Nîmes, Romans, Limoges, Angoulême, Bergerac, the PUC…

And today? Toulouse, Montpellier, Paris, Bordeaux, Lyon, Clermont…

A financial policeman, and an assistant too

A financial policeman that also acts as an assistant is on hand: the former Direction Nationale Aide au Contrôle de Gestion (DNACG), now A2R. Its role: to head off excesses and maintain sporting fairness through very close monitoring (budgets, cash flow, wage bill), with swift sporting sanctions (see Tarbes, Niort, Dax and Grenoble over the past calendar year) including points deductions, relegations, restrictions or bans on recruitment, receiverships, guardianships and in-season supervision.

The idea? If a club cheats or puts itself in financial danger, the sporting side will feel it, instantly, in mid-season. So relegations during the campaign, points taken away, recruitment restricted. The punishment lands, along with supervision but also help, with adjustments to support clubs struggling to bridge the gap between their forecast budget and the reality, and no mercy at all for those who are not transparent.

What A2R monitors

A2R (ex-DNACG) oversees the finances of every professional club (Top 14, Pro D2) and part of the federal game.

In practice, it checks:

  • Forecast budgets and actual accounts
  • Debts and cash positions
  • Wage bills (including the salary cap)
  • Legal compliance

It can impose heavy sanctions: points deductions, a ban on recruiting, a cap on the wage bill, a refusal of promotion, an administrative relegation.

Tarbes and Niort in Nationale, Bourg-en-Bresse on appeal, Dax, Narbonne, Biarritz, Grenoble, Toulouse and Stade Français can all testify to the policeman’s work in recent seasons, as ready to punish as it is to support.

The aim is not to punish but to avoid clubs going bust mid-season, to guarantee sporting fairness between clubs and to prevent financial excesses.

More firmness, closer surveillance, help for weakened clubs: the policeman’s job is to keep the damage down…