The Top 14 mercato has finally slammed shut after two months of chequebooks flapping in the Provençal breeze, and Midi Olympique has totted up the damage to find that the whole market lost its mind over one position: the humble number 9. Every club, it seems, spent the summer deciding that what they truly needed was a small, furious man to feed the scrum and boss the giants. Musical chairs, played at pace, with a rugby ball.
Coly heads for the Basque coast
Léo Coly is the headline act, bound for Aviron Bayonnais on a three-year deal after one last season at Montpellier — a move to the Basque coast that swaps one kind of French passion for another, with better seafood and a rowdier crowd. When a 9 this tidy changes postcode, the ripples run down the whole league, because everyone behind him in the queue just moved up a chair.
Clermont and Toulouse batten the hatches
Meanwhile the big beasts are busy nailing their own doors shut. Clermont are "confident" of tying Baptiste Jauneau down, per Midi Olympique, though confident and signed are two very different words in the transfer game — one is a feeling, the other is a fortune. And Stade Toulousain, hoarders of talent that they are, plan to keep Naoto Saito another season, because Toulouse collecting scrum-halves is a bit like a dragon collecting gold: nobody needs that many, but try prying one loose.
So the window closes with the 9 jersey the belle of the ball and the rest of us reading Midi Olympique like a soap-opera recap. The teams are set, the deals are inked, and the Top 14 season can now brew in peace — right up until the first injury, when some director of rugby remembers he let one scrum-half too many walk out the door. Vive le mercato. See you all again in the winter panic.