Andrew Mehrtens had plenty of tough encounters on the field during his storied career but the former All Black fly-half is facing one of his most formidable yet as he prepares to watch his team Beziers’ final match this season in the French second tier.
On Friday, the once-mighty club hosts league leaders Brive knowing that there will be no fairytale ascension, this season at least, into the Top 14.
Instead, the club that he took over in November along with ex-South Africa flanker Bobby Skinstad and an Irish consortium, including the late former Formula One team owner Eddie Jordan, will have to regroup and start again next season in the ProD2.
It was a surprise to many when the takeover was announced but for Mehrtens, who spent two years as a player at Beziers as well as a spell as an assistant coach, it was a case of heart and head working in tandem.
“Ever since I played there it just felt like there was room for an opportunity for the club to get back to the elite thanks to a good project,” the 70-time international told AFP.
“It’s leveraging off the passion and the history and hopefully modernising a little bit, maybe adding a more international renown or prestige,” he added.
History is deeply engrained in a club that is a classic ‘sleeping giant’ of French rugby
Based just 13km off the sun-drenched Mediterranean coast, they were founded in 1911, winning 11 French titles — 10 of them between 1971 and 1984. But they dropped out of the top league in 2005 and have not been seen since.
Beziers will miss out this season on the ProD2 play-offs on head-to-head results, a disappointing end to a campaign which was respectable on the field but a wreck off it with separate allegations of sexual and physical assault against three different squad members.
They also had to contend with Jordan’s death in March.
“Unfortunately we lost Eddie a couple of months ago but he was very passionate about it, he loves sports,” said Mehrtens deliberately using the present tense.
“While it’s very sad for all of us on a personal and a professional level to have lost Eddie, we’ve still got an ally in Kyle Jordan, Eddie’s son.”
For Mehrtens, however, the bottom line to the season is one of relative failure.
“Beziers were in the play-offs last year and narrowly lost in the semi-finals so I guess you could say it’s a bit of a backward step this season,” said the 52-year-old.
“However there have been some challenges.”
‘Arms race’
One of the biggest of those challenges has been cash.
Beziers have a budget of 9 million euros ($10 million), just the ninth biggest in the 16-team league and less than half of Brive’s 22 million which has allowed them to muscle up with the signing of ex-England international Courtney Lawes.
There are no such big names at Beziers, although the ambition remains the same: promotion to the financially lucrative Top 14.
“We’ve got to increase our budget year on year if we’re realistic about going up,” said Mehrtens.
“We don’t want to just come in and throw a bundle of money at it and try and buy our way up because that’s fraught with danger. I don’t think that’s sustainable.
“Little by little we are certainly going to increase our budget but without getting caught up in an arms race with some of those bigger budgets.”
Beziers have been linked with former Wales and British and Irish Lions full-back Leigh Halfpenny, despite the goal-kicker turning 37 next December, and Mehrtens admits that the club will need to come up with some imaginative contracts to attract the talent.
“I like to think we will be able to be flexible going forward in terms of trying to make sure we get a player such as a Leigh Halfpenny or any established international player who’s trending towards retirement,” Mehrtens said.
“We can offer them a flexible contract where it’s not too onerous.
“It depends what we want from them and what we can offer them not just in monetary terms but if they’re a player that’s got family, we can help look after that sort of situation.
“I’m sure a lot of clubs try and do that globally and holistically… but not every club is lucky enough to be on the Mediterranean coast.”
