FRENCH COLUMN
Another of French rugby‘s leading gamekeepers turned coach this week, as Top 14 referee Maxime Chalon put down his whistle and joined boyhood club Brive as a consultant – highlighting in the process a potential future brain drain problem that the French game needs to solve before it’s too late.
The good news is French rugby officials recognise it. The bad news is they have yet to find an answer.
After eight years taking charge of top-flight domestic games, former professional scrum-half Chalon will head to Brive’s Stade Amedee Domenech several times a week to consult and coach on law interpretation, discipline and refereeing.
He’s a long-time student of the game, whose experience will be missed in refereeing circles as much as it has, no doubt, been welcomed at Brive.
He played one season in what was then the Top 16 at the turn of the millennium then swapped playing for refereeing at the age of 29, and worked his way to the top of the professional tree for a second time before deciding that, at the age of 44 – one year before the official retirement age for referees in the top two divisions in France – enough is enough.
Chalon joins Romain Poite (Toulon), Alexandre Ruiz (Montpellier), and Laurent Cardona (Bordeaux) in giving up the whistle for a position at a club – though his part-time status at Brive also puts him alongside former ProD2 referee Cedric Clave, who works with Castres on a consultancy basis.
Jerome Garces, meanwhile, started working with the French national sides on a consultancy basis after retiring from refereeing to take up a role as National Technical Direction of Arbitration with the LNR.
And Tual Trainini, widely praised for his handling of last season’s Top 14 final, is this season combining refereeing duties with consultancy work at ProD2 side Aixen-Provence – arelationship that means he will not take charge of any match involving the club.
As Trainini will referee mostly in the Top 14, and has an eye on an international future, his inability to referee one ProD2 match in eight on occasional weekends isn’t a great problem.
But Chalon’s decision to retire a year earlier than scheduled means the Top 14 has lost four experienced referees at the same time – with Cedric Marchat also out of the reckoning having joined the National
“This issue could become very serious, very quickly if ignored”
Direction of Arbitration as a technical manager for refereeing in the top amateur Federale divisions.
Only one, Jeremy Rozier, has been promoted to the domestic game’s top refereeing table. A couple more ProD2 referees are being closely monitored as potential future Top 14 game managers, but France’s flagship division will operate this season with only 17 referees on the books.
Chalon’s role at Brive is similar to those of his former refereeing colleagues. “Whether in Brive or in other clubs, the role of arbitration is not taken into account enough,” he told Rugbyrama. “We see players have difficulties with the laws. This is [something] to work on, as much as individual technique.”
The effect on discipline at those clubs that have been using referees is evident. Montpellier’s penalty count midway through last season was nearly 20 per cent lower than the 2020/21 campaign. Castres, too, can point to a significant drop in penalties – notably in danger pointscondeding areas – since Clave came on board.
Anecdotally, as well, the news has been positive. Toulon-bound Benoit Paillaugue said of Ruiz’s influence at Montpellier: “His presence brought a lot of precision to small details of the game. Montpellier were penalised much less than in previous seasons. We, the players, were much more attentive. More disciplined. We were also able to better understand how a referee works.”
Little changes in player behaviour at key points in the game, cutting penalty counts and turning narrow defeats into wins – it’s a small-gains game that Toulon, Bordeaux, Brive and Aix-en-Provence are hoping their new hires can deliver.
From the point of view of the clubs tempting referees over to the other side seems a no-brainer but it presents officialdom with a problem that Franck Maciello, head of the national directorate of arbitration, knows he needs to prevent becoming a major issue. He recognises the advantages. “If referees join clubs, we can expect teams will make fewer errors, play better within the laws and make referees’ jobs easier,” he said recently.
But, he added: “Who will referee our championships if this brain drain continues?”
Maciello, who was in charge of the 2007 French championship final, is not hiding from the issue of a possible future shortfall in top-flight referees. “We have to find solutions, because the skills that [experienced referees] are now bringing to clubs are no longer available to [help] upcoming, young referees – and that breaks a chain of transmission … in our operation.”
This is a frog-boiler of an issue for France that could easily become very serious very quickly if it is ignored.
Chalon, like Poite, Cardona and Garces, were at the point of retirement, anyway, when they switched roles -Poite was, in fact, 46, but could stay on domestically because he was still under a World Rugby contract. As soon as that ended, it was up to the referee and the league to decide whether he should continue. They decided not to.
Ruiz, who is still in his 30s, has not ruled out a return to refereeing in future, and Trainini is fulfilling that dual role at the moment. But an answer needs to be found soon before all 30 clubs in France’s top two divisions – and maybe the next 30 in Nationale 1 and 2 – all follow the lead of the vanguard five.
Top 14 fixtures
Saturday September 3: Racing 92 v Castres, Brive v Lyon, Pau v Perpignan, Stade Francais v ASM Clermont Auvergne, Toulon v Bayonne, La Rochelle v Montpellier Sunday September 4: Bordeaux Bègles v Toulouse
One solution up for consideration is professionalising upper-echelon refereeing. Currently, only five referees in France have professional full-time contracts. The rest combine the job with other roles -Thomas Charabas is an A&E consultant; Trainini works at Airbus; Chalon is a computer engineer; new-boy Rozier, who’s 31, is a PE teacher.
“The subject of the professionalisation of refereeing is on the table of both the FFR and the LNR,” Maciello confirmed.
One thing is certain, the big beast institutions of French rugby are sitting up and taking notice. Which is good.
No firm answer has yet been found. Maciello admitted: “The solution will not come only from referees. All the components of rugby must sit around the table and reflect.”
