Montpellier have done a U-turn on Henry Thomas, slamming the door on the former England prop playing in Wales next season.
Thomas completed his controversial international transfer from England to Wales despite a warning from last year’s French champions that the decision would cost him his club job even though his Montpellier contract had another season to run.
Ospreys, left with a hole to fill by Tomas Francis’ enexit to Aix-en-Provence, led the Welsh bidding anxious to replace one Wales tighthead with another.
Montpellier’s decision to end Thomas’ employment left the player facing a hefty pay cut to further his Wales career post-World Cup without falling foul of the 25-cap rule. All that has changed with the intervention of the richest man in world rugby, Montpellier’s multi-billionaire president Mohed Altrad.
The 75-year-old French-Syrian who turned his scaffolding business into a global terprise has decreed that Thomas remains on the payroll next season.
Thomas’ storming finish to the Top 14 campaign convinced Altrad that the putative Wales tighthead was too valuable to be cut loose because of his Test come-back.
He had been signed to provide cover for other front row players on World Cup duty never imagining he would be offered the chance of going there himself.
“Henry will be coming back to us after the World Cup,” Richard Cockerill, Montpellier’s new forwards’ coach, told
The Rugby Paper yesterday. “You can never have enough tighthead props of proven quality.
“Henry did well towards the end of last season. We’re going to need him because once the World Cup is over, we play 18 weeks on the bounce, the vast majority of them in the most physical League in the world.”
Thomas switch blocked by Altrad
The former Sale and Bath prop had put his club future in jeopardy because he considered the Welsh offer to bring him out of the Test wilderness ‘too good an opportunity to turn down’.
Thomas appeared in seven Tests for England, all off the bench, the last against New Zealand at Eden Park all of nine years ago. Ironically, he could make his first start against England in Cardiff on August 5, the first of Wales’ three pre-World Cup fixtures.
Meanwhile, at least two more Welsh internationals are preparing to spend next season in the French Second Division.
Rhys Webb, who opted out of the Wales World Cup squad in pursuit of ‘an opportunity to play abroad’, is reported to have signed for Biarritz along with ex-Dragons and Scarlets’ centre Tyler Morgan.
