JIFF looks likely to play a vital role

IT’S LOGICAL – as the final stop-start sprint in a hard fought Top 14 season begins – to think purely in terms of matches remaining, points potential, and table possibilities. In fact, with play-off and Champions Cup places up for grabs, and relegation to avoid, such thoughts are not just logical, they’re inevitable.

- JAMES HARRINGTON

The league is as tight as it ever was. After Stade Francais and Toulouse, seven sides are chasing four play-off places. Four plus all-butdown Oyonnax are fighting to avoid the relegation zone.

But they’re not the only consideration. One more number – a season-long constant, rather than any of the standard considered and already mentioned variables – is at the heart of coaches’ considerations every week.

And it takes on greater significance at this time of the campaign for some clubs.

That number is 16. It’s the minimum average of JIFF-qualified players that established clubs in the Top 14 must maintain in their matchday squads throughout the season. The minimum average for sides in their first season in the Top 14 is 14, and any side that is in its second season must maintain an average of 15 JIFF-qualified players.

A JIFF player is anyone who has spent a set amount of time in French age-grade rugby, or in a Top 14 or ProD2 club’s academy set-up.

Because of the matchday requirement – and a secondary limit of 13 non-JIFF players in a club’s senior squad – JIFF players enjoy a premium on the transfer market. It was reported last week that Montpellier cut short their interest in Mako Vunipola because of JIFF rules; while, in the ProD2, Dax’s Irish centre Alex McHenry won’t have his contract renewed despite impressing coaches at the club, due to his non-JIFF status.

The penalty for missing the JIFF matchday quota is a points deduction the following season. Most sides are comfortably above the minimum – the league average is 17.8, with Toulouse and Racing 92 both above 20. But, with time fast running out, two sides at the wrong end of the table – Montpellier and Clermont – are flirting with the rules.