The 33-year-old former England captain has been unavailable since early November and labelled a ‘flop’ by the French media
The hope being expressed about Owen Farrell at Racing 92 is “the best is yet to come” as the former England captain returns to action on Saturday, after two and a half months out due to injury.
Farrell could surely not have expected such a tormenting time in his debut season across the Channel, after he left Saracens last summer, with his big-spending Parisian employers assailed by trouble on and off the field.
From a crippling injury list to rumours swirling around the future of head coach Stuart Lancaster and Farrell himself, and players in disciplinary strife, Racing are in danger of bombing in both the season’s major competitions.
They are ninth out of 14 in the French league, and bottom of pool four of the Champions Cup, needing a win at home to Stormers on Saturday and other results to go their way to make it into the last 16.
The 33-year-old Farrell, who gave up playing for England as part of his move, has not featured since 2 November.
He started eight of the first nine matches in the league, winning five, before needing surgery on a groin problem that had forced him to pass his highly valued goal-kicking duties to scrum-half Nolann le Garrec.
Farrell is likely to ease himself back with less than 80 minutes on Saturday, followed by facing Castres in the league the following week, as he bids to win over an underwhelmed French public and press.
A neat pick-up for a try against Perpignan in October was a highlight, but the rugby paper Midi Olympique branded him as “the No 1 recruitment flop [in the Top 14]… plunging [observers] into an abyss of dismay”.
Farrell was pictured chatting with Saracens’ majority owner Dominic Silvester at his former club’s recent visit to Stade Francais.
But The i Paper has been told by a well-placed source at Racing that the rumour of Farrell cutting short his two-year contract to return to England – Leicester and Saracens among those mentioned in the gossip – is incorrect, and he is expected to stay put next season.
His young family – wife Georgie, sons Tommy and Freddie, and Ronnie the dog – are with him in the French capital.
And despite the obviously frustrating inactivity of late, Farrell is said by Racing team-mates to have been a great contributor in squad meetings and video analysis, particularly on defence.
He was in the coaches’ seats alongside Lancaster and assistant Frederic Michalak for the 23-12 win over Harlequins.
Farrell joined Racing 92 from Saracens last summer (Photo: Getty)
Frederic Bernes, a rugby writer who covers Racing 92 regularly for French newspaper L’Equipe, tells The i Paper: “Up until now, Owen’s impact on the team is not really strong on the field; he was so-so.
“But if you ask the Racing players, they are very enthusiastic about him: his commitment and his leadership.
“The young back row Maxime Baudonne said ‘he was very involved, he was like another coach for us’”.
Farrell has asked team-mates to speak to him in French but he is thought to be still speaking in English, and that might affect the way he was a tone-setter with Saracens and England.
And he is working amid the overall context of a club in transition under their ambitious owner Jacky Lorenzetti, developing youth and moving on from the team who had Finn Russell at fly-half when they played their third losing Champions Cup final out of three against Exeter Chiefs in 2020.
Farrell and Russell are in a long line of Lorenzetti’s stellar No 10s – Dan Carter, Johnny Sexton, Andrew Mehrtens, Francois Trinh-Duc and Francois Steyn included – but they and other big names such as Jamie Roberts, Sebastien Chabal and most recently World Cup-winning captain Siya Kolisi have failed to land the big fish of the Champions Cup.
Recruiting the former England boss Lancaster from Leinster for the 2023-24 season was widely hailed as a smart move, and results at first were good, but they have dipped since the start of last year.
Racing lost last season’s Top 14 semi-final qualifier to Bordeaux-Begles, after which Lorenzetti laid into star signing Kolisi for a “lack of impact” – and Kolisi soon departed.
Lancaster this season might point to five matches agonisingly lost in the last play, and then there have been multiple distractions including his own need to deny he had made any contact with Munster over their coaching vacancy, contrary to a version on a rugby podcast.
Racing’s board chairman and former coach Laurent Travers quit in December, after 12 years at the club, while the long-serving hooker Camille Chat was sacked last week, and moved on to Lyon.
The 33-cap French international reportedly turned up to training in an unfit state, three days after the 29-7 loss at Sale Sharks in December.
“There was no winner in this,” Lancaster said last week.
The Fijian wing Vinaya Habosi, who performed strongly in last week’s third-round 29-19 loss in Glasgow, underwent an internal disciplinary case early in the season after a public row with his wife, though no police charges were brought.
There have been sneers from critics, too, over Lancaster picking his son Dan in Racing’s sky-blue-and-white jersey.
Lancaster junior arrived as a squad player, with experience for England Under-20s alongside Jack van Poortvliet and Fin Smith.
But he will start at inside centre alongside Farrell at Racing’s swanky indoor La Defense Arena on Saturday, after injuries to Gael Fickou and Sam James, and with the some-time fly-halves Tristan Tedder and Antoine Gibert as the full-back and replacement half-back cover, respectively.
And then there is Henry Arundell, the England wonderkid in his second season at Racing, who will be returning to the Premiership this summer, although he is said within the club to have impressed with “the right attitude” in his Parisian sojourn.
Bernes says Lancaster – who is a rare example of an English head coach in the French league – has been an engaging presence with the press, albeit while speaking his native tongue.
“Publicly, the players are supporting him and his game-plan,” he says.
Racing on Saturday need the heft of Romain Taofifenua and Wales’s Will Rowlands to help give Farrell a platform to play, and maybe revive talk of his own father Andy taking him on tour with the British & Irish Lions this summer.
If not, the recent history of Racing suggests Lorenzetti will not keep any adverse opinions to himself.
“Racing 92 is a special animal,” Bernes says.
“It’s not a city club, it’s a departement club which is very unclear in terms of identification. You have some real supporters but they are much less than in Toulouse, La Rochelle, Bordeaux, Toulon and so on.
“When things are getting bad, sometimes you need pressure from outside to wake everybody up. That’s why the famous bursts of anger of Lorenzetti can be useful.”
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