Top 14

Top 14
Current season or competition: 2009–10 Top 14 season
Sport	Rugby union
Instituted	1892
Number of teams	14
Country	France
Holders	Clermont (2009-10)

The Top 14 is a rugby union club competition which is played in France. The Top 14 is at the top of the national league system operated by the French National Rugby League, also known by its French initialism of LNR. There is promotion and relegation between the Top 14 and the next level down, the Rugby Pro D2. The fourteen best rugby teams in France participate in the competition, hence the name Top 14, though the competition was previously known as the Top 16.

The first ever final took place in 1892, between two Paris-based sides, Stade Français and Racing Club, with the latter becoming the inaugural champions. The competition has been held on an annual basis since, with the exception being between 1915 and 1919 because of World War I. The current champions are Clermont.

History

A match between Stade Francais and Biarritz at Stade de France in 2006.

Early years

The first competition was held in 1892, as a one-off championship game between the Racing Club de France and Stade Français. The Racing Club defeated Stade Français four points to three to win the first ever title, though the "stadistes" got their revenge the following year in a repeat of the final. The match official for that first final was Pierre de Coubertin. Stade Français would go onto win a number of titles thereafter. The 1897 and 1898 series were awarded on a points system after a round-robin. Although the competition was called the French championship, entry was confined to just Parisian clubs. The 1899 season was the first to include clubs from outside of Paris, and led to Stade Bordelais (from Bordeaux) winning the final that season, which was also played outside of Paris, in Le Bouscat (a suburb of the city of Bordeaux).

For the following decade the championship game would usually end up being contested by the Racing Club, Stade Français and Stade Bordelais, with Stade Bordelais actually winning five titles during this period. During this time the final was usually held in various stadia around Paris with the exception of 1903 and 1909 where it was held in Toulouse, as SOE Toulouse and Stade Toulousain were finalists respectively. The competition was then won by a number of different clubs before World War I, with teams like FC Lyon, Stade Toulousain, Aviron Bayonnais and USA Perpignan claiming their first titles.

Between the wars

Due to the war, operations were suspended for a number of years. In its place, a competition known as the Coupe de l'Espérance was held which consisted mostly of young boys who had not yet been drafted. The competition was held four times but is not normally considered a full championship. The normal competition returned for the 1920 season, and Stadoceste Tarbais became the first post-war champions, defeating the Racing Club in the final. During the 1920s Stade Toulousain would create its now famous rugby history, winning five championships during the decade. USA Perpignan would also win two championships (their 1925 final victory was actually a second match, as a previous final had ended in a nil-all draw).

During the 1930s the championship game was held only in Bordeaux and Toulouse. The 1930 championship game won by Agen over US Quillan, was the first final to go into extra-time. It would also see Toulon and Lyon OU win their first championship games. During the latter part of the decade, RC Narbonne, CS Vienne and Perpignan all won titles, and Biarritz Olympique were champions in both 1935 and 1939. During World War II no competition was played.

Postwar

After the war the championship final returned to Paris, and was played at Parc des Princes for the next four seasons. The competition during the 1940s was won by a number of different teams, though Castres won in 1949, and then again in 1950. FC Lourdes would become a dominant club during the 1950s, winning five championships, and another in 1960.

SU Agen would go onto win three titles during the 1960s as well. Lourdes were also the champions of the 1968 season, but due to the May 1968 events, the finale was played three weeks behind normal schedule. At the end of regulation time the score was tied at 6-6, and then 9-9 after extra-time. Lourdes were declared champions because they had scored two tries to Toulon’s none and also because it was impossible to reschedule a third final so late, as the French national team were to leave on a tour to New Zealand and South Africa.

Although Béziers won their first championship in the 1961 season, it would be the 1970s which would see a golden era for the club, as they would win ten championships between 1971 and 1984, as well as being runners-up in 1976. Also in the mid 1970s, after being held in Toulouse, Lyon and Bordeaux in recent years, the championship final was taken to Parc des Princes on a permanent basis. During the rest of the 1980s, Toulouse were the dominant team, winning the championship in 1985, 1986 and 1989. Toulon won in 1987 (and were runners-up in 1985 and 1989), and Agen won in 1988 (and were runners-up in 1984 and 1986).

Into the professional era

The first match of the 1990s went into extra time, as the Racing Club defeated Agen, winning their first championship since 1959. CA Bordeaux-Bègles Gironde, Toulon, Castres and Toulouse would win the following finals. The 1990s also saw the game of rugby union go professional following the 1995 Rugby World Cup in South Africa. This also led to the establishment of the European Heineken Cup. Including their 1994 victory, Toulouse won four championships in succession. For the 1998 season, the final was moved to the newly constructed Stade de France, the new national stadium. The final, played in front of 78,000, saw Stade Français win their first championship since 1908.

Rising popularity

The competition saw an enormous rise in popularity in 2005-06, with attendance up by 25% from 2004-05, and numerous sellouts. On 15 October 2005, Stade Français drew a crowd of 79,502 at Stade de France for their home match against Toulouse; this broke the previous French attendance record for a regular-season league match in any sport (including football) by over 20,000. That record was broken on 4 March 2006, when Stade Français drew 79,604 to a rematch of the 2004-05 final against Biarritz at Stade de France. It was broken again on 14 October 2006 with 79,619 as the same two opponents met, and a fourth time on 27 January 2007, with 79,741 for another Stade Français-Toulouse match. However, critics often point to the fact that most tickets for these Stade de France regular season games are drastically discounted (with many going for as low as 5 Euros) for the specific purpose of filling this prestigious venue and establishing the image of Stade Français as a popular club in the French capital.^[1]

The future

Despite this recent rise in popularity, a financial shadow hangs over French rugby, starting in 2009 and continuing into 2010. The French government announced in 2009 that it would suspend a law known as DIC (Droit à l'Image Collectif) effective 1 July 2010. This law, created in 2004, allowed all member clubs in French professional sports organizations to treat 30% of each player's salary as image rights. This portion of player salaries was thus exempt from France's high payroll and social insurance taxes, enabling French clubs to compete on a more equal footing with other European clubs.^[2]

While the most visible critics of the change in policy were wealthy club owners such as Mourad Boudjellal of Toulon and Max Guazzini of Stade Français, concern was growing in French rugby circles that some smaller clubs might fold completely. Bourgoin only avoided a bankruptcy filing in 2009 by players agreeing to large wage cuts, and Brive, whose 2009–10 wage bill was €7.2 million, announced that they would cut their budget by 40% for the 2010–11 season.^[2] Following the 2009–10 season, Bourgoin were denied a professional license by LNR due to their ongoing financial issues, although the club plans to appeal this decision. Montauban were relegated at the end of the same season after filing for bankruptcy.^[3]

Another shadow hanging over the sport in France is fixture congestion. Rugby journalist Ian Moriarty strongly criticized the sheer number of fixtures that the top clubs must navigate, noting that by the end of December 2009, the top clubs in the league will have played 20 matches domestically and in the Heineken Cup in the 2009–10 season. This compares with 15 for English clubs, with two more in the Anglo-Welsh Cup, and 14 for Magners League clubs, with the Welsh clubs in that competition also having two Anglo-Welsh Cup fixtures. This congestion, including three league matches during the November Test window, frequently leads to player exhaustion and injuries. For example, going into the December rounds of the Heineken Cup in 2009, Perpignan had five injured front-row forwards; Toulouse coach Guy Novès was forced to rest key players in several matches due to sheer exhaustion; and Biarritz, hurt badly by an injury to star back-rower Imanol Harinordoquy while on international duty during the November Tests, and Clermont, also with many international call-ups, went into temporary domestic freefall.^[4]

The most obvious solution to this perceived problem would be a reduction in the number of clubs. The Guinness Premiership has 12 clubs, as does the Magners League following its addition of two Italian teams for 2010–11. The largest French clubs all support reducing the top tier to 12, but the current LNR president Pierre-Yves Revol has so far staunchly opposed any major changes in the competition; according to Moriarty, Revol "believes that the 118 year-old French championship takes precedence over everything else, including the national team."^[4] Moriarty, noting the financial struggles of clubs near the bottom of the Top 14 ladder, later asked the rhetorical question, "Is this yet another sign that a Top 12 would be better for French rugby in the long run?" However, he added that Racing Métro owner Jacky Lorenzetti was publicly in favor of returning to a 16-team league because he felt this would increase team revenues.^[3]

In another recent development, in December 2009 the LNR announced it would institute a salary cap in the Top 14 beginning with the 2010–11 season. Under the provisions of the cap, team payrolls will be limited to €8 million, and clubs will be required to hold 20% of their salary budget in reserve, up from the previous 10%.^[5] This is in addition to an existing requirement that wage bills be no more than 50% of a team's turnover.^[6] However, Moriarty called the salary cap "little more than a bit of sleight of hand by the LNR to appease a sporting public", noting that the €8 million cap is in fact 5% greater than the highest official wage bill in the 2009–10 Top 14, and translated to £7.1 million at the time the cap was announced, well above the Guinness Premiership's then-current £4 million cap. He also added that clubs would likely find ways around the cap, noting, "Last season, it's rumoured that one big, overseas name was paid less than 40% of his total income as a salary."^[6]

At the same time as LNR announced the salary cap, it also announced new rules requiring a minimum percentage of French players on club rosters. Original plans were to require 50% French players in 2010–11, but protests from leading clubs led to a reduction to 40% for that season. The 50% quota must be met in 2011–12, and 60% in 2012–13. Qualifying players must have been registered with the French Rugby Federation (FFR) for at least five years before turning 21, or have spent three seasons in an FFR-approved training centre if they are currently under 21.^[5]

Format and structure

Final ASM vs Stade Français

The Top 14 is contested by fourteen professional rugby union clubs throughout France. The domestic season runs from August through to June. Every club contests 26 games during the regular season - over 26 rounds of competition. The season is split into two halves for scheduling purposes; both halves are scheduled in the same order, with the team at home in the first half of the season on the road in the second. Throughout the August-June competition there are breaks during the season, as there are also European Rugby Cup (Heineken Cup and European Challenge Cup) fixtures that are played during the rugby season, as well as the Six Nations Championship, in which many top French players are involved, as well as a few players from the other European powers. The schedule may be adjusted somewhat in World Cup years; this was especially true in the 2007-08 season, which ran up against the 2007 Rugby World Cup in France. That season, the Top 14 played on all of the Six Nations weekends and on some of the Heineken Cup weekends.

The Top 14 is organized by the Ligue Nationale de Rugby (LNR), which runs the professional rugby leagues within France (Top 14 and Rugby Pro D2). There exists a promotion and relegation system between the Top 14 and Pro D2. The two lowest placed clubs on the ladder after the regular season are relegated to Pro D2, while two clubs come up from Pro D2, specifically the champion and the winner of a knock-out playoff between the next four teams on the ladder. Starting with the 2009–10 season, the Top 14 knock-out stages consist of three rounds. The teams finishing third through to sixth on the ladder play quarter-finals, hosted by the #3 and #4 teams. The winners then face the top two seeds in the semi-finals, whose winners then meet in the final at Stade de France. In previous seasons, only the top four teams qualified for semi-finals. Unlike many other major rugby competitions (such as the Guinness Premiership, ITM Cup, Currie Cup, and from 2009–10 the Magners League), the Top 14 has traditionally held its semi-finals at neutral sites.

Regardless of the playoff format, the top six teams have qualified for the following season's Heineken Cup in recent years. Before the 2009–10 season, the seventh-place team also qualified if a French club advanced farther in that season's Heineken Cup than any team from England or Italy. While the European qualification system was changed for 2009–10, the normal contingent of six Top 14 teams in the Heineken Cup did not change.

Previously in the first phase of the then-Top 16, the teams were divided into two pools of eight. This was followed by a second phase, in which the eight highest-ranked teams played for semi-final spots and the bottom eight teams battled against relegation. In 2004-05, the top division consisted of a single pool of 16 teams, with the top four teams advancing to a knockout playoff at the end of the season to determine the champion. From 2005-06 through 2008–09, the top division was run with a single pool of 14 teams, again with a season-ending four-team playoff. The single pool was retained for 2009–10, but the playoffs were expanded to six teams.

The LNR uses a slightly different bonus points system from that used in most other major domestic competitions. Instead of a bonus point being awarded for scoring 4 tries in a match, regardless of the match result, a bonus point is awarded to a winning team that scores 3 tries more than its opponent. This system makes two scenarios that can be seen in the standard system absolutely impossible:

• A losing team earning two bonus points. (The "offensive" bonus point, linked to the number of tries scored, can only be earned by the winning team in France.)
• Either team earning a bonus point in a drawn match. (See above for the "offensive" bonus point. The "defensive" bonus point can only be earned by a losing team.)

This system also makes it very unlikely that both teams will earn bonus points in the same match. In the three seasons since LNR implemented its current bonus points system, only two Top 14 matches have seen both teams earn bonus points.

European competition

The Top 14 also serves as the qualification route for French clubs into the two European Rugby competitions: the Heineken Cup and the European Challenge Cup. A minimum of six French clubs qualify for top level of competition, the Heineken Cup. The top six ranked French clubs (one through to six on the points ladder) at the end of the regular season qualify for the following season's Heineken Cup. In accordance with rules changes that take effect with the 2009–10 season, the winners of the Heineken and Challenge Cups each receive automatic Heineken Cup berths for the following season; unlike past years, these berths are not at the expense of a country's allocation. However, England and France are capped at seven Heineken Cup berths each. If either country produces both Cup winners in the same season, one of its league berths in the Heineken Cup will instead go to the club that is ranked highest in the European Rugby Club Rankings that is (1) not of that country and (2) not already qualified for the Heineken Cup.^[7] This means that France will have seven berths if either of the following happens:

• A French club wins either of the two Cup competitions.
• English clubs win both Cup competitions, and the club that stands highest in the ERC Rankings among those that did not otherwise qualify for the Heineken Cup is French.

Under the regulations of the Top 14, the teams are presented to the Heineken Cup's organizer, European Rugby Cup, in the following order:^[8]

1. The French champion.
2. The runner-up in the championship final.
3. The Heineken Cup winner (automatically guaranteed a berth by ERC rules).
4. The losing semifinalist in the French playoffs that finished higher on the league table.
5. The losing semifinalist in the French playoffs that finished lower on the league table.
6. The Amlin Challenge Cup winner (automatically guaranteed a berth by ERC rules).
7. If France earns a seventh berth, it will be based on league position.

If a winner of one of the European cups is relegated, it will not be nominated to either cup competition; its place will be taken by a current Top 14 side based on league position. If no French team wins a European cup, qualification for Europe will be based strictly on league position at the end of the regular season.^[8]

All Top 14 clubs that do not qualify for the Heineken Cup automatically qualify for the Challenge Cup.^[9] This means that all Top 14 clubs will participate in European competition during a given season.

The French clubs have had huge success in the European competitions. The inaugural Heineken Cup, held in the 1995-96 season, was won by Toulouse, which would lead to two other championships as well (2003 and 2005). It would also not be until the fifth championship game until there was no French team in the final. In addition, there have also been three occasions where the final was an all-French encounter, all won by Toulouse (against Perpignan in 2003, Stade Français in 2005, and Biarritz in 2010).

In addition to the French success in the Heineken Cup, the clubs in the lower European competitions have achieved similar results. The first four finals of the European Challenge Cup (1997–2000) were all-French affairs. Since then, however, only one French club (Clermont in 2007) has won this competition, and French clubs in general have had less success; the revised Top 16/Top 14 format has required them to pay more attention to league games in order to avoid relegation. The now defunct European Shield, a repechage tournament for clubs knocked out in the first round of the Challenge Cup that was played for three seasons from 2003-05, was won by a French team each time.

Current teams

2010–11 season

Agen

Bayonne

Biarritz

Bourgoin

Brive

Castres

Clermont

La Rochelle

Montpellier

Perpignan

Racing Métro

Stade Français

Toulon

Toulouse

Locations of the 2010–11 Top 14 teams

Note: In the table below, English capitalization rules are used for full club names. In French, adjectives, including proper adjectives, are not capitalized, although the names of political subdivisions used as nouns are capitalized. For example, the full name of ASM Clermont Auvergne using French rules is Association sportive montferrandaise Clermont Auvergne.

Results

The scores in green are links to the account of each final on the site of the professional league (LNR). In French.

Total wins

Notes

See also

• Bouclier de Brennus
• Challenge Yves du Manoir
• Coupe de France

• Super 14
• Top League

External links

• (French) Official site
• French league results (in English)
• Finalesrugby.com
• Top14Rugby.com
• FrenchRugbyClub.com (English)