Canal+

and they picked up a few more injuries as well along the line to lose.

So, um, he was threatening, uh, two or three days before the game that if he got one more injury in the lead up to the game, he wasn't, he was going to, you know, call it match off, which he'd never do for his friends in Canal Plus.

Never.

But he was threatening it.

They'll be able to do replays, slow-mos for the ref so that the ref will actually, it's not just an on-field decision.

The ref can go upstairs and have a look at things like that.

And Canal Plus are still going to do their few games as well.

And it's hoping to attract more sponsors into the game, make it more widely available to people, things like that.

So I really got cross about that.

And speaking of cross, Fred Vasseur speaking to Canal Plus at the race.

This is not the result we hope, especially when we're P1 and P2 after turn one.

I'm having trouble swallowing it.

Went from basically saying almost nothing the entire summer, including at the tour, where he would just very, very briefly respond to the few interview requests that were even granted, to going on a radio blitz this week on French radio.

Canal Plus, and there's three or four more of them that he ended up on.

Just another one that dropped yesterday.

What has he said? What has he said that's been interesting? Dane, you were working on a story on a sort of a success update for

Right.

Like that's basically that's exactly what has happened.

And that's probably also what kept rmc and canal plus and what was the there's a third one that was just yesterday the inter podcast the inter podcast which again these are all just sort of like national uh french either french radio which has sort of podcasts associated with it or any specifics don't really matter the one yesterday same thing right like like they probably have been asking for a pulse success interview for since april right or march and they this is this is the carrot that was dangled in front of them to stop asking like listen we're doing a week in october you're scheduled in he's going to come to the studio because he did he came to these studios sat in front of people with the correct microphone etc you're going to get 11 minutes, which is what yesterday's was, and you're going to be happy about it.

That was essentially the way that that all went down.

And there's always that balance between club rugby, international rugby, the top 14 here in the Champions Cup, whether the solution is around an increase in the salary cap and an increase in the squad size.

whether the solution is because certainly I know in France they certainly won't reduce the number of games in the top 14 if Canal Plus have anything to do with it so it's certainly real and live and I think as well For us, we noticed we went from grass pitches to travel, we went to Gloucester, we played on a synthetic pitch, we lost a couple of guys in that game and we lost a couple of guys in the week afterwards to muscle injuries.

We're looking at it, what can we learn from it, what can we do better? But I certainly think there is a collective responsibility as well for everybody.

and that's you know we already mentioned about the breakdown and the ruck and some of the consequences but the game has to be as safe as possible and I think an injury level of 25% is too high

And then Showmax, we were right about to do a Nigerian blue therapy, and they've packed up shop.

Part of this Canal Plus acquisition of multi-choice, which means that actually on the continent now, there's less buyers than there were two years ago.

So it's even tougher.

That just means there's a huge opportunity, there's a huge hole there for a platform to emerge that is servicing that huge audience.