KEY POINTS:
There has long been a perception in Europe, particularly France, that buying New Zealand players is a guarantee of quality.
Mostly that is true but not always. The French are starting to find that out. Some clubs over there have had a little too much faith in the New Zealand guarantee. Midi Olympique, the respected Toulouse-based rugby paper, realised that on one weekend of Top 14 action, 90 per cent of the starting props were not French.
This was not right. French rugby had spawned Robert Paparemborde and Gerard Cholley and many more legends of the front row. Their obsession with the scrum, at all levels, has never waned.
France importing props... seriously, it's like Eskimos importing snow. At least now there are some people in French rugby circles waking up to the dangers of offshore recruitment and the mediocre form of Toulon is helping open a few eyes.
Toulon are coached by a New Zealander - Tana Umaga - and full of New Zealand players - Saimone Taumoepeau, Ben Castle, Jerry Collins, Orene Ai'i and Sonny Bill Williams.
They are struggling in Top 14 and are particularly under pressure in the scrum most weeks. Taumoepeau and Castle have regularly started and, by all accounts, they are not exactly setting the world on fire.
Questions are being asked because big money is flowing into imports' pockets and there is growing evidence some of the New Zealanders, like Castle and Taumoepeau, are really no better than the available French props.
Many followers in France fear this influx of foreign talent will impact on French rugby.
If only a handful, if that, of French props are regularly playing for their clubs each week, that is going to be to the detriment of the national team.
NZRU chief executive Steve Tew says this is an issue he has raised several times at IRB level. "Every meeting I have attended I have said that the clubs have the ability to destroy the international game."
Everyone nods, apparently, when he says this but there is little that can be done. There are strict laws in Europe that prevent restraint of trade which is why quotas restricting the number of overseas players a team can contract are not legal.
Tew says that IRB chairman Bernard Lapasset is going to lobby the European Union to see if sport can be treated differently, but no one is holding their breath. It's a long shot and it will take years to get through the legislative system.
Without any restrictions, the only thing Tew can hope for is that other club owners take a look at Toulon and pressure their coaches to justify why they are buying New Zealanders ahead of local players.
