Player release is a constant clash, with the French national team given 87 days of access to their players this year. By way of comparison, the All Blacks have 14 full weeks - a week before each test - plus they were able to hold two three-day camps during Super Rugby, a few days extra before the Rugby Championship which included a trial game against Canterbury and Wellington and about an additional week to take care of commercial obligations so they don't cut into preparation time.
Central contracting is not everyone's cup of tea but who in New Zealand would swap it for the French system - with its biggest flaw that it is held prisoner by free market economics.
Erstwhile specialist French rugby paper Midi Olympique held its glitzy annual awards this week in Paris. It was a gathering of the great and the good - former and current players, captains of industry and the like; seemingly everyone in Northern Europe with a bit of loose change in their pocket.
Rugby in France is big business. Seriously big business. The total budgets of the Top 14 clubs were revealed last week; collectively they are spending close to 300 million ($486.5 million).
Toulouse are the biggest spender at 35 million ($56.5m) a season, ahead of Clermont who reportedly run at a comparatively light 27m ($43.7m). That's huge money.
The New Zealand Rugby Union makes total revenue most years of between $100m-$115m and probably between $25m-$30m is spent on contracting players.
But Midi's award ceremony was also an illustration of the vicious cycle at work. The Top 14 has become a monster. The problems start with the nature and motivation of those individuals who invest in clubs. A sports team remains the ultimate vanity purchase and attracts personality types who are used to winning and getting what they want.
So across France teams are spending ever greater amounts to build bigger and better squads. The men at the top want what they perceive to be the best and in most cases that is considered to be foreign talent. Clermont are big buyers of offshore talent; Toulon and Montpellier want to be up there, too - hence their decision to splash out for Rene Ranger.
More than 40 per cent of the contracted players in the Top 14 were not born or are not eligible to play for France. South Africans, Fijians and Argentinians are the three biggest representative groups.
For several years the Ligue National de Rugby - the body that runs the professional club game - has tried to reduce the foreign influence and has revealed plans to offer financial incentives to clubs with a squad of more than 55 per cent French-qualified players by 2017.
The clubs have resisted and will continue to do so. To them it doesn't matter - winning is winning.
South Africans have a reputation for being able to settle quickly and to deliver consistent, solid performances. French flair may be dead within the national team but it lives on in club football through an abundance of Fijian wings.
To an extent, the French Federation has resigned itself to the status quo; it appears to accept the clubs are too powerful to change so, instead of fighting them, the national side has exploited the residency ruling around eligibility.
In the current squad are South Africans Bernard Le Roux and Antoine Claassens. Former Sharks halfback Rory Kockott will soon be eligible on residency while Fijian wing Noa Nakaitaci toured New Zealand in June.
This is what French rugby has been reduced to - scrambling for odds and sods from anywhere.
The three highest earners - Jonny Wilkinson, Johnny Sexton and Bryan Habana - are all foreigners and another three, Carl Hayman, Bakkies Botha and Matt Giteau are in the top 10. These 10 players alone command combined pay of about $750,000 a month - almost $9m a season.
That's pretty much the story of the game here - too much is being invested in too few who are not French and it is having a dramatic impact on the quality of the national team.
