Ala’alatoa to Clermont? Weise to Stade Francais? And what’s the story with those Peato Mauvaka and Matthieu Jalibert whispers? Here’s the lowdown on the latest Top 14 transfer rumours for the 2024/25 campaign
Michael Ala’alatoa
Samoa’s captain and Leinster tighthead redoubt Michael Ala’alatoa agreed to join Top 14 side Clermont from next season while in France during Rugby World Cup 2023, according to L’Equipe.
The sports daily, which had mentioned the possibility of Ala’alatoa’s France switch previously, said that Ala’alatoa has agreed to join Christophe Urios’s rebuild at Stade Marcel Michelin on a two-year deal.
Regis Montagne
Nominative determinism in prop form, Grenoble’s 23-year-old mobile Alp – a former France under-20 international, for five whole minutes in February 2020 – has been linked with a switch to the Massif Central and Clermont, where he’s set to provide back-up and competition on the right-hand side of the scrum for Ala’alatoa.
Sacha Lotrian
On the other side of Clermont’s front row next season, reports suggest, another former France under-20 international with a mountainous link. Lotrian is said to be swapping the Pyrenees for the Massive Central as he swaps Perpignan’s mountains-and-sea mix for the next stage of his life halfway up a Puy.
Jean Kleyn
Midi Olympique reports that Lyon are looking closely at the CV of Munster’s World Cup-winning South African lock as a replacement for Racing 92-bound Romain Taofifenua.
Midol’s report is long on speculation and filler and microscopically short on actual detail. That’s not to say there’s no truth in the rumour – and there’s no doubt Fabien Gengenbacher has a couple of holes to fill in his pack, with both Taofifenua and prop Demba Bamba moving to join Stuart Lancaster in the Parisien suburbs.
But it would seem, right now, that anything approaching a deal is a long way from being done, especially as Munster’s Graham Rowntree is keen to keep his man, who became non-Irish qualified when he recommitted to South Africa earlier this year.
“He knew, we knew, all parties knew, that it was going to be challenging keeping hold on him but those contract negotiations are ongoing,” Rowntree told reporters this week.
Demba Bamba
Best give those two Lyon forwards a mention, now. Tighthead Bamba was on the radar last season, when reports suggested he was ready to follow former coach Pierre Mignoni to Toulon despite having a year left on his contract.
That switch never materialised. But Racing 92 have moved swiftly to sign the France international, who is out of contract at the end of the current campaign, and who has yet to properly fulfil his astonishing potential. Intriguingly, such a move would put Bamba in direct competition with Thomas Laclayat for the 3 jersey for both club and country.
Romain Taofifenua
Former France under-20 prodigy Bamba won’t be alone when he moves from the south-east to the fringes of the French capital. Second row Taofifenua, who announced his retirement from international rugby after Les Bleus’ exit from the Rugby World Cup, is making the same Top 14 club move.
Irakli Aptsiauri
With Bamba heading out of the door, Lyon need a tighthead. They’ve wasted no time finding a promising one. The 20-year-old Georgian tighthead, who featured twice for his country as a replacement during the Rugby World Cup, will make the short move from Grenoble to Lyon next season, according to reports in France. To be fair, it’s no big surprise that new Lyon boss Gengenbacher would be interested in Aptsiauri. He was in charge at Stade des Alpes until the end of last season.
Joris Segonds
Camille Lopez has been a player reborn since switching from Clermont to Bayonne at the start of the 2022/23 campaign, scoring 217 points in 31 outings, 28 as a starter.
It seems highly likely that manager Gregory Patat will want to activate the one-year option on Lopez’s contract – but they do have to look to a post-Lopez future. Which they are, and it seems they have a ready replacement in current Stade Francais fly-half Joris Segonds. Word is player and club are ready to go on a five-year deal.
Baptiste Chouzenoux
Not a rumour, to be honest, this one. Bayonne confirmed last month that the 30-year-old Racing 92 back row, whose career kicked off in the Basque Country, will return to his formative club next season.
Matteo Carreras
Canal Plus, which broadcasts the Top 14 in France, and has a pretty good handle on these things, has said that the Argentinian winger – scorer of a fine hat-trick in the Rugby World Cup against Japan – is to join Bayonne from Newcastle on a three-season deal from the 2024/25 campaign.
Peato Mauvaka
Stade Francais’ general manager Thomas Lombard stomped all over reports the Paris club were lining up an offer for French international hooker Mauvaka, who is under contract at Toulouse until 2026.
Yet Midi Olympique is sticking by its reporting, claiming that the player is ‘torn’ on finishing out his contract at Toulouse, where his designs on the starting 2 jersey routinely face a Julien Marchand-shaped challenge, or a future as undisputed number one.
But Toulouse aren’t going to want to let him go – and Lombard is on record as saying the latest incarnation of Stade Francais are no longer willing to spend money on release fees. So it seems pretty dead in the water. For now.
In the meantime Stade, who have no fewer than 21 senior players out of contract at the end of the current campaign, are very much in the market for an experienced hooker. They tried to bag Codie Taylor, apparently. That didn’t work, either…
Matthieu Jalibert
As with Mauvaka, so with Jalibert. The Bordeaux fly-half was also the subject of similar World Cup reports about a possible switch to Stade Francais, despite being under contract through to 2025. And the Paris club’s GM, Lombard, dealt with them both at the same time.
He said the following of the rumours about Jalibert and Mauvaka. “That’s great, because we’re making offers to players who are under contract, which is strictly forbidden. I’d love to have this offer brought to me, it would make me laugh a lot.
“First of all, we respect the rules. No formal offer has been made. Before making an offer, you have to negotiate a release fee. The owner of Stade Francais has made it clear that, apart from any obligatory training compensation, the club will no longer pay any release fee.”
Jalibert’s under contract with Bordeaux through to 2025, so Lombard’s rebuttal seems pretty definitive. Stade could do with a fly-half, however, with Segonds heading to Bayonne. Damien McKenzie’s name has been mentioned, but – as with Taylor in the hooking department – their efforts to prise him out of New Zealand’s contractual grasp has come to nought.
Jasper Wiese
The media look to be on more solid ground here, as Rugbyrama reports Leicester’s World Cup-winning South African number 8 Wiese is in ‘advanced negotiations’ with Stade Francais.
The club – which recently confirmed a change in recruitment direction under the new management of Laurent Labit and Karim Ghezal, with a clearer academy pathway to the senior group and a smaller professional pool – has made no secret that it urgently needs a hooker, a fly-half and an eight.
They may be struggling with the first two, but not it would seem with their hunt for an eight.
Joe Jonas
One player Stade Francais have managed to sign early is Biarritz’s electric fullback. Jonas has been around the top of French rugby pundits’ big move watchlist for some time. He could do very well in Paris, in the new-look Stade set-up.
Lewis Ludlum
Back to uncertainty. Reports that Ludlum was close to a deal to join Toulon surfaced in The Rugby Paper, and were soon backed-up by L’Equipe, which insisted an agreement had been reached to put pen to paper on a three-year contract when the player visited the club’s training centre while in France for the World Cup.
But Northampton’s director of rugby Phil Dowson insists that the last word on the back row’s immediate future has yet to be written.
“We are desperate to keep Luds,” Dowson told the media after the Saints’ recent 24-18 win over Bath. “He’s club captain and he’s exactly what the club’s all about in terms of someone coming through the Academy and working incredibly hard on his game in getting to the very top level.
“We’re in negotiations at the moment and, as it stands, nothing has been formalised so we’re going to keep pushing on that to keep him here.”
Kyle Sinckler
The same L’Equipe report that said Ludlum was about to join Toulon also said that Bristol and England prop Sinckler had also agreed to join the Var club, where they’ll team up with World Cup colleague Dave Ribbans.
Midi Olympique reported in September that there’s a heavy British element to the CVs currently circulating the desks of French clubs, with several dozen Premiership players looking for deals on the French side of the Channel.
It suggested that between 60 and 80 British-based players – a sizable proportion of them with Premiership clubs – have feelers out with clubs in France
The fact of a CV does not automatically mean the fact of an offer. As well as the salary cap, French clubs have JIFF regulations to consider, which limit them to a maximum 13 non-JIFF players.
But, according to Midol, some 20 files are attracting particular attention for next season. It would appear Ludlum and Sinckler are two of them…
George Ford
Ford’s CV is apparently again circulating around French clubs, as it was doing last season. The Rugby Paper reported in July that it was attracting some interest on the desks of power at Racing 92, news that appeared to be confirmed by Midol in early September. Since then, crickets.
More recently, his name has been mentioned in recruitment dispatches from Stade Francais, without anything approaching concrete evidence. Looks like we’ll have to wait a bit longer for news one way or another.
Paul Jedrasiak
Clermont cited ‘personal reasons’ when they confirmed some time ago that they and Jedrasiak have agreed not to activate a one-year option on the 30-year-old 10-cap international lock’s contract to keep him at Marcel Michelin next season.
The question, then, is where the player, a one-club lock for a decade, will go next, with Castres having all-but got signature ink on a contract, by all accounts.
Will Collier
In fact, Castres appear to have started the recruitment season at a rare old pace, as Jeremy Davidson looks to put his stamp on the club.
It’s no secret the squad is light on front-row options and it’s reported that they have already bagged another soon-to-be-former one-club player in Harlequins’ two-cap international prop. With Collier, Hounkpatin and Chilachava, the tight side of the scrum squad looks solid. There’s just the ongoing loosehead problem to sort now…
Guillaume Ducat
Castres haven’t stopped with Collier and Jedrasiak, either. Word is from the French media that they’ve also bagged 2.05m second row Guillaume Ducat, from Pau, right from under the noses – reports say – of Clermont.
With Rino Pieterse and possibly Leone Nakarawa likely to leave the club at the end of the season, it’s no surprise that Davidson is looking to beef up his second row stocks. And Jedrasiak, Ducat, Tom Staniforth, Gauthier Maravat, Romain MacCurdy, and Florent Vanverbergh are pretty beefy.
Castres may even be looking to shift the mobile Maravat into the back row. But that’s one for the new forwards coach that the club is said to be on the lookout for…
Remy Baget
And there’s more from the 2018 champions. It’s reported to the point of acceptance in France that they have signed winger Remy Baget from Bayonne.
Baget did not immediately successfully transfer his ProD2 predatory instincts to the Top 14 in Bayonne’s return season, scoring just four tries in 22 outings – a touchdown count that started with a try in the first match of the season and ended with a hat-trick against Lyon on the final day.
It’s a far cry from the 15 he scored in their successful promotion campaign. But he’s been a near ever-present in the Basque side’s squad. He played 22 matches last season, and featured in the first five matches of the 23/24 campaign.
Thomas Ceyte
The lock was one of the stars of the Top 14 in Bayonne’s top-flight return last season. Now 33, he had plied his journeyman trade at Nevers, Dax and Beziers when Bayonne came calling at the end of their promotion year – and he did not let them down.
He played 25 times for the Basque side, 21 of them in the starting line-up, going all the way through from first whistle to last 10 times. Apparently, Clermont boss Christophe Urios noticed, as it’s said the veteran lock is heading to Marcel Michelin next season to replace Jedrasiak.
Daniel Bibi Biziwu
Pau manager Sebastien Piqueronies, who headed up the France age-grade system their first two World Under-20 Championship-winning years in 2018 and 2019 has a fully justified reputation for getting the very best out of young players.
His MO at Pau is more of the same. Some clever recruiting of experience and youth is just starting to bear fruit. In an unusual World Cup-affected season, the club has already risen to the head of the Top 14 for the first time ever, beating Toulouse, Lyon, Perpignan and Racing en route.
And Piqueronies isn’t going to change the successful formula he’s developing. Now, he has reportedly tempted 22-year-old former France under-20 prop Daniel Bibi Biziwu to leave Clermont for Stade du Hameau.
Lekso Kaulashvili
One of Piqueronies’ experienced signings. The Georgian international prop, who can play on either side of the scrum, is switching Chaban Delmas for Stade du Hameau next season, after six seasons at Bordeaux.
My name is James Harrington. I’m a freelance sports journalist based in France, writing mostly about French club and international rugby. If, after reading this, you feel the urge to commission me for match previews, reviews, features, interviews, live blogs, feel free to contact me
And, please read my weekly French rugby column in The Rugby Paper every Sunday. And I also round-up all the weekend’s Top 14 action on the Irish Examiner website.
James Harrington: Rugby writer and freelance sports journalist 
James Harrington: Rugby writer and freelance sports journalist
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