Rugby: Hayman's stock continues to fall

Carl Hayman. Photo / Getty Images

The whole incredible farce of Carl Hayman's non-season at French Top 14 club Toulon is finally at an end.

Yet the wonder - the absolute bemusement - at how the club of the Mediterranean made Hayman, widely regarded as the No. 1 tight head in world rugby when he joined the club last June, the highest paid prop in the world at a reported 625,000 euros a season yet at the same time turned him into almost a complete nonentity as a player, continues.

According to Toulon's own statistics, Hayman incredibly made just three starts in his entire first season with the club. His other 21 appearances were as a substitute.

Yet to spend such a huge sum of money on one player out of the club's 20.8 million euros total budget and then sit him on the bench for almost the entire season, defies belief.

In his earlier career, Hayman made 149 appearances in eight years for Otago and the Highlanders between 1999 and 2007. From 2001 to 2007, he also played 46 times for the All Blacks and twice for the New Zealand Maori.

That represented a total of 197 games in eight years, the vast majority of them as a member of the starting line-up. That averages out at 24.6 games per season.

At Newcastle in the English Premiership, he made 64 first team appearances and went onto the field a further 10 times from the sub's bench in three seasons. That also works out at 24.6 matches per season, again with the overwhelming majority as a member of the starting line-up. For Toulon to have used him just three times all season as a starting line-up player is crazy.

What it has meant is that as a player, Hayman appears to have gone backwards this season.

Whilst they clearly need to be looked after, props need to play rugby on a pretty regular basis, preferably from the start of matches. To use Hayman as just a bit-part player is a mystery that has dumbfounded the whole of French rugby.

And now there are growing clamours for explanations regarding the farce. Andre Herrero, one of the great legends of RC Toulon who played for France 22 times between 1963 and 1967, this week called his club's treatment of Hayman "an affront" and "unjust".

In an extraordinary attack, Herrero spelled out why he felt the former All Black had been so badly treated.

"I regret that Toulon has not judged it right to have confidence in Carl Hayman, the international All Blacks prop" he wrote in the respected French rugby paper, 'Midi Olympique'.

"I am not one of those who think he has spoiled his season. I think however that no one has done anything to allow him to blossom.

"I swear that if I had been at the command of RC Toulon, I would have made Hayman an indisputable incumbent for at least several months. And I am sure that he would have imposed himself as an unquestionable leader.
"Even considering that the All Blacks are mad men who don't know what they are doing, everything makes you think that Carl Hayman is a formidable prop.

"He is very effective in close combat, skilful, good in defence, precise in his interventions and moving himself very well, he appeared to me many times better than Davit Kubriashvili (Toulon's Georgian international tight head prop) who has only the control of the scrum for him.

"For, in my eyes, rugby is not limited to the closed scrum. But out of this lack of confidence, which he (Hayman) must have felt as an affront, I think that he must have felt a bit lost in a game without great organisation, lacking bearings, conviction and dimension.

"For all these reasons, I therefore find it unjust the regard given to this player who deserved better and has not been able to achieve what was expected of him. I am also bound to think that the presumed bad season of Carl Hayman is a flogging for all the problems that the organisation of the Toulon game has had this season. But that's another debate ..."

There is, right now, considerable disharmony and debate at the French club. An ambitious owner, Mourad Boudjellal, is impatient for success and justifiably so after spending many millions of his own money to try and restore the club to its former trophy-winning ways.

So for the club to have ended up in mid-table mediocrity, not qualified for the end of season play-offs or even next season's Heineken Cup, has created immense tension at the Stade Mayol.

Hayman's plight, whatever the health of his private bank account, is likely to be debated at much length this summer in the off-season. If coach Philippe Saint-Andre has used him so little, it must follow that, for whatever reason, he either does not really rate Hayman as a player or dislikes his attitude.

If either is the truth, Toulon may conclude it would be better to off-load Hayman before next season starts, even if were necessary, which would certainly be the case, to give the New Zealander a handsome pay-off.

But if that were to happen, would Hayman stay in France or go home? No-one except him knows the answer to that $64,000 question.