Casting an eye down the Top 14 table, it starts off in regulation fashion. Toulouse top – obviously – Bordeaux hot on their heels and Toulon, the club from the Côte d’Azur hoping to reimagine their galactico glory years, in third.
But, then, in the strangest of Top 14 seasons, where only eight points separate sixth from 12th, something strange happens. The name of Bayonne appears. Not Clermont, La Rochelle, Racing 92, Stade Français or any other French aristocrat; but Bayonne, the town in the French Basque Country, seven kilometres inland from local rivals Biarritz, with its population of just over 50,000.
Three years ago, Bayonne were in the Pro D2, scrapping it out in France’s second tier, one of the most gruelling domestic leagues in world rugby. Now, these Basque underdogs sit comfortably fourth – five points clear of fifth and nine ahead of the nearest play-off chasers. There are only six matches of the regular season to play, before the play-offs.
In many ways, the club’s upstart, above-their-means campaign is a perfect encapsulation of the craziness of French rugby. Bayonne have not lost once at home in either the Top 14 or Challenge Cup this season – with both Toulouse and Bordeaux already having come a cropper at the Stade Jean-Dauger – but it is not just form on their own patch which has resulted in a surge up the table. Other, significant forces are at play, too.
Bayonne’s recruitment, which will be bolstered further next season by the arrival of Laurent Travers from Racing 92 as director of rugby, has been savvy – and no one embodies that more than the former England centre, Manu Tuilagi.
When the Basque club announced that Tuilagi would be leaving Sale Sharks at the end of last season to ply his trade in south-west France, the announcement was met with a degree of suspicion. Everyone knew that Tuilagi, the centre with more than 60 caps for England and another for the Lions, on his day had been one of the world’s pre-eminent midfield technicians. But everyone knew how prone he had been to injury, too.
That sentiment was echoed by Midi Olympique, the respected French rugby newspaper, who said the following in January when naming Tuilagi as one of the Top 14 signings of the season so far: “When Bayonne signed Tuilagi, there were as many questions as there was fanfare,” it wrote. “Which player had the Basques just recruited? The star of the 2010s, the English midfield bomb who made centres tremble the world over? Or the more discreet, often injured player who went through the last few Premiership campaigns with a certain ...
