Nick Cain’s column: Megabucks Toulouse give Manu Tuilagi a dilemma

Manu Tuilagi has one year left on his Leicester Tigers contract and Toulouse have sounded out the 24-year-old England centre about a move to south-west France.
Looking at it in pure business terms, which I’m sure Tuilagi’s elder brother and commercial mentor, Freddie, is tempted to do, Toulouse are capable of making them an offer they cannot refuse.
Toulouse remain one of the wealthiest clubs in the Top 14 despite the arrival of millionaire owners such as Racing 92‘s Jacky Lorenzetti.
This makes them eminently capable of coming up with something between the £408,000 they pay French captain Thierry Dusautoir and the £600,000 yearly wage Leigh Halfpenny is on at Toulon – and if they did it would dwarf Tuilagi’s combined Leicester and England earnings.
Tuilagi’s Leicester salary is unlikely to exceed £225,000, and his maximum England earnings would currently be £150,000 a season (£15,000 per Test). This means that if he was included in every England match squad for ten games he could bank no more than £375,000 in an exceptional season. And the last two seasons have not been good for Tuilagi financially, with his England income slashed to the bone after spending almost two years on the sidelines injured, first with a pectoral tear, and currently with groin trouble.
As a consequence Tuilagi has played in just four of England’s last 20 internationals, which means national earnings of only £60,000 over the past two years – making a combined club and country yearly income of barely more than £250,000.
That is half of what a marquee player like Tuilagi could expect to make in the Top 14, and to make monetary matters worse, his bank balance will take an even bigger hit following his axing from the England World Cup squad.
His recent conviction for assault has cost him dearly in every respect, not least a potential £150,000 to £250,000 bonanza in match fees and bonuses over the next five months, with the top figure achievable through a £100,000 bonus for winning the 2015 tournament.
What also has to be factored in is that Tuilagi’s potential to earn from commercial endorsements will have been adversely effected.
That is why the Toulouse approach, spearheaded by club president Rene Bouscatel could not have been better timed. They would also be mindful that with Tuilagi’s brother, Henry, having played for Perpignan for a number of season, the family is not short of French connections.
Leicester countered the Toulouse incursion immediately by stating that they had already begun their own talks with Tuilagi about extending his stay at Welford Road. The Tigers, who are about to embark on a rebuild after a second season without silverware, are desperate to keep a crowd-puller like Tuilagi.
They are therefore very unlikely to agree to Toulouse paying a transfer fee to buy out the year he has left on his Leicester contract, despite having just agreed to release Didier Mele, their French scrum-half, from the last two years of his contract to join the Top 14 club.
However, with Toulouse already having persuaded Toby Flood to part ways with Leicester two seasons ago – when the fly-half was still on England’s radar – they will be confident of getting their man.
The flip side of the coin is that Richard Cockerill and company know that they will probably have to raise the financial bar much higher than the Tigers ever have if they want to prevent Tuilagi from being tempted by the cash flashed at him by the ‘loads-of-money’ Top 14 clubs.
For his part, Tuilagi is faced with a dilemma.
On one hand he could try to negotiate a bigger deal with the club that brought him to the UK and secured him citizenship, and also back himself to regain his England place and become central to their 2019 World Cup plans.
On the other, he can take the money and do his blockbusting running in the Top 14 for the next five or six years, and in the meantime hope that the RFU drop their England exclusion clause for overseas-based players.
However, if Leicester refuse to release him, as seems likely, there is an obvious path open to Tuilagi next season. It involves returning to full fitness, getting back to his rampaging best for Leicester, and making an irresistible bid for England’s 2016 Six Nations squad.
That way he can take stock of what happens in the World Cup, and then choose between Leicester and England, or Toulouse and the Top 14 next summer.
However, the reality is that in pro sport filthy lucre talks much louder than loyalty, and that unless the RFU and the Premiership clubs find ways of matching the French cash, then sooner rather than later star players like Tuilagi will follow the money.