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Montpellier sign French international Rattez
By Ian Cameron
Montpellier have confirmed the signing of French international wing Vincent Rattez ahead of the 2020/2021 season. Rattez has signed on a three-year deal and will officially start his time at the club from July 1st.
Born on March 24, 1992 in Colombes, Rattez starred for France at this year's Guinness Six Nations, and signs on at MHR from La Rochelle. The 28-year-old started his career at Narbonne in the ProD2, before making the jump to the Top 14 in 2016.
Montpellier Director of Rugby, Xavier Garbajosa said on the MHR website: "Vincent Rattez is an important boy in the squad because of his state of mind who brings a lot of bond. He is a boy who has progressed a lot from year to year since his departure from Narbonne until to becoming an international.
"We expect Vincent to bring us his rugby and human qualities, his high standards and his good humor!"
The 89kg flyer is quite a direction change on the wing for Montpellier, who are losing the services of giant Fijian wing Nemani Nadolo, who outweighs the Frenchman by 50kg. Rattez was part of France's World Cup campaign, although he had not played for France in more than two years, before he was drafted into Les Bleus' RWC 2019 squad mid-tournament. He was not in France's original 31-man squad, but called up as an injury replacement for Thomas Ramos.
He attended the same Parisian academy as Wesley Fofana.
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Latest Comments
Well that sux.
Go to commentsLike I've said before about your idea (actually it might have been something to do with mine, I can't remember), I like that teams will a small sustainable league focus can gain the reward of more consistent CC involvement. I'd really like the most consistent option available.
Thing is, I think rugby can do better than footballs version. I think for instance I wanted everyone in it to think they can win it, where you're talking about the worst teams not giving up because they are so far off the pace we get really bad scoreline when that and giving up to concentrate on the league is happening together.
So I really like that you could have a way to remedy that, but personally I would want my model to not need that crutch. Some of this is the same problem that football has. I really like the landscape in both the URC and Prem, but Ireland with Leinster specifically, and France, are a problem IMO. In football this has turned CL pool stages in to simply cash cow fixtures for the also ran countries teams who just want to have a Real Madrid or ManC to lose to in their pool for that bumper revenue hit. It's always been a comp that had suffered for real interest until the knockouts as well (they might have changed it in recent years?).
You've got some great principles but I'm not sure it's going to deliver on that hard hitting impact right from the start without the best teams playing in it. I think you might need to think about the most minimal requirement/way/performance, a team needs to execute to stay in the Champions Cup as I was having some thougt about that earlier and had some theory I can't remember. First they could get entry by being a losing quarter finalist in the challenge, then putting all their eggs in the Champions pool play bucket in order to never finish last in their pool, all the while showing the same indifference to their league some show to EPCR rugby now, just to remain in champions. You extrapolate that out and is there ever likely to be more change to the champions cup that the bottom four sides rotate out each year for the 4 challenge teams? Are the leagues ever likely to have the sort of 'flux' required to see some variation? Even a good one like Englands.
I'd love to have a table at hand were you can see all the outcomes, and know how likely any of your top 12 teams are going break into Champions rubyg on th back it it are?
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