Glory days not enough, says Meeuws

Kees Meeuws

Kees Meeuws would almost certainly have extended his All Blacks career up to the 2007 World Cup but for what he regarded as an unfair financial scheme operating at the time in New Zealand rugby.

The tighthead prop now in France with the Castres club admits that the financial disincentives within the New Zealand game drove him overseas.

Meeuws has been in France for just over a year and has now signed a new contract which will keep him with Castres until 2008.

He has been made club captain, although he is currently out injured for another month after snapping a tendon in his leg.

"There were two major reasons I wanted to leave New Zealand," he said this week.

"The payment schedules for players and therefore security were both completely different to here in France.

"You signed a contract in New Zealand based upon your potential but here in France you just get the money, it is guaranteed.

"Back home it was all about potential and a lot of the young guys were only getting 50 per cent of what they signed for.

"You might sign a $200,000 contract but as much as $100,000 of that was dependent not just on making the All Blacks but then playing in the domestic tests, the Tri-Nations and on the overseas end-of-year tour.

"I said they needed to guarantee me 80 per cent of my contract value to keep me but they wouldn't agree to those terms.

"They thought I wouldn't leave because I was the incumbent in the test team and they thought the glory of playing for the All Blacks would keep me there under any terms. But when that offer I wanted wasn't made I looked elsewhere. They were quite shocked, I know that."

Meeuws wasn't the only All Black to depart, Xavier Rush, Carl Hoeft, Andrew Mehrtens and Justin Marshall also left for the Northern Hemisphere.

Rush, Mehrtens and Marshall went to the UK and Hoeft has settled on the opposite side of the Castres scrum to Meeuws.

Does Meeuws regret losing the opportunity to stay and play for the All Blacks, quite possibly up to next year's World Cup? "I have no regrets about going. I made my choice and that was it. But I think it got across the message that they needed to change the way they ran their contractual obligations and that has now happened.

"They would have lost a lot more players if they had not changed it.

"I still get pangs about missing out on test rugby and my heart swells with pride when I see the All Blacks run out on to the field for an international. But I am happy here in Castres.

"I loved living in Dunedin, which was big enough to be a city and small enough to be a town. It's a bit like that here, a nice quiet place."

In a sense, Meeuws didn't get what he expected at Castres, a renowned rugby town about 70km north-east of Toulouse.

"I came here expecting a complete change. But because the club had so many overseas players, I found myself starting to fall back on the same routines and speaking English to a lot of them.

"But I have forced myself to learn French and I can now make myself understood by local people who don't speak English. I take language lessons at least once a week and use French more and more.

"I enjoy the lifestyle here, especially the cafe culture. Everything shuts down between 12 and 2pm, and on Sundays there is no shopping at all.

"Life back in New Zealand these days is moving so fast that people don't take time to smell the roses but here, they keep parts of the week for family. That suits me fine."

Castres have not had a great season in France and are out of the Heineken Cup before the quarter-finals are decided.

But they have solid financial resources and their ability to recruit top players from around the world remains undiminished.

* Peter Bills is a rugby writer with Independent News & Media in London.