JAMES HARRINGTON
FRENCH COLUMN

No-one has ever denied – no-one has ever been able to deny – that the French rugby season is an ultra-marathon rather than a sprint. But when the World Cup comes around it takes on ferocious ironman triathlon levels.
The current Top 14 season kicked off on Saturday, September 4, 2022. It will end, for seven teams, on Sunday, May 28, 2023, when all matches on the final round of the campaign kick off at the same time.
But for the top six sides, and the 13th-placed side in the French top flight, there’s still between one and three matches of post-season rugby ...