TalkingRugbyUnion in partnership with Seniormash Reflections on Substack
When Johnny Matthews runs out in the colours of Montauban this season, there will be plenty of people around Sedgley Park and Glasgow taking a little more interest than usual in France's second tier; and so they should, because the Pro D2 which Matthews is joining is no ordinary second division.
It is increasingly one of the most fascinating rugby competitions in Europe: well financed, fiercely supported, geographically diverse and populated by a mixture of emerging talent, seasoned internationals and players whose journeys have taken them through virtually every level of the professional game. It’s competitive nature reminds me more of National League Rugby 1, rather than the newly named Champ.
The 2026/27 season begins this week with 16 clubs embarking on another 30-round marathon.
Last season more than 1.5 million spectators attended regular-season Pro D2 matches, setting a competition record for the third successive year, while the final at Stade Ernest-Wallon was sold out.
A second division with serious financial muscle
Figures circulating ahead of the new campaign place Provence Rugby at the top of the financial table at around €20 million, followed by Brive at €17m and Grenoble at €13m. Sat slightly behind them come clubs including Biarritz, Nevers, Oyonnax, Montauban and Agen, all operating with budgets which underline the scale of the competition.
Even allowing for differences in precisely how French clubs calculate and report their budgets, these are substantial organisations rather than small professional teams surviving beneath an elite league.
Indeed, Provence president Denis Philipon has spoken of his club reaching €22 million this season after approximately five per cent growth. His message to the players was equally straightforward: with the biggest budget comes the expectation to win, and almost everybody seems to agree. Midi Olympique's traditional pre-season survey asked the 16 Pro D2 coaches who they expected to become champions. Fourteen voted for Provence Rugby. Brive received one vote. Most intriguingly for followers of Johnny Matthews, the other went to Montauban.
From Sedgley Park to Montauban
Matthews' presence provides a particularly interesting connection for followers of National League Rugby. His journey has been anything but conventional. After playing his rugby outside the traditional academy pathway, including time with Sedgley Park, Matthews eventually established himself at Glasgow Warriors and became one of the most prolific hookers in European rugby.
His Glasgow numbers are remarkable. The 32-year-old leaves having reached a century of appearances and with a try-scoring record which places him among the most productive players in the club's history.
He scored 14 tries during Glasgow's title-winning 2023/24 URC campaign and became the first Warriors player to score five tries in a single match. When Glasgow announced his move, only George Horne and DTH van der Merwe stood above him on the club's all-time try-scoring list.
Now the next chapter takes him to south-west France. Montauban is not going into Pro D2 merely to make up the numbers; after relegation from the Top 14, they are regarded by several coaches as genuine promotion contenders despite a significant turnover in personnel. For Matthews, therefore, this isn't a gentle late-career adventure in France. It is another highly competitive challenge.
There is also a neat off-field connection back to the North West. Matthews is an avid Everton supporter; something he shares with Britain's new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham. Burnham, a lifelong Evertonian and former season-ticket holder, attended the club's opening Premier League match after becoming Prime Minister. From Sedgley Park to Glasgow, Scotland and now Montauban, Matthews' rugby journey has travelled a fair distance, but the football allegiance has remained resolutely blue.
At Sedgley Park in 2013, Matthews signed on the same day as my son, Max Ashcroft. The two of them formed an incredibly strong front row with Ben Black, with a second row of Louis McGowan and Jimmy Lloyd. That front five with no.8 Juan Crous dominated Nat2N. It certainly gave Matthews the springboard to his try scoring reputation.
The toughest marathon in rugby?
National League Rugby in 2014 was a long season so Matthews knows a thing or two about a marathon season but it is the length and competitiveness of Pro D2 that makes it so compelling.
There are thirty rounds nationwide with the teams are subjected to lengthy journeys. A feature of rugby in France is the hostility away teams face at the home grounds. Promotion dreams at one end and the threat of falling into Nationale at the other. There is very little comfortable middle ground; that is so familiar with England’s National League Rugby.
At the top, Provence appear to have assembled a squad designed specifically to finish the job after narrowly missing promotion last season. Brive remain one of French rugby's great traditional names and are widely viewed as Provence's principal challengers.
Oyonnax, Colomiers, Agen and Grenoble all have legitimate ambitions of reaching the top six, while relegated Montauban bring Top 14 experience back into the competition, and as sated, the try scoring machine that is Johnny Matthews.
There are intriguing stories throughout the league; for instance, Béziers have added former All Black centre Malakai Fekitoa and Wales back-rower Mackenzie Martin, while former Springbok prop Gurthrö Steenkamp has taken charge.
Nice return to Pro D2 after an extraordinary summer of financial and political uncertainty, while Narbonne also step up from Nationale and then there is Biarritz, a name synonymous with the European Cup and some of the great French sides of the professional era now begins another season in France's second division.
The pyramid matters
There is another reason why Matthews' move should interest followers of the English game, his career demonstrates the importance of maintaining meaningful rugby beneath the highest professional level.
Players do not all develop at 18. They do not all emerge from Premiership or URC academies; the vast majority need games that are competitive; whist there are many who simply develop later.
Matthews travelled a route which included Sedgley Park and Boroughmuir before becoming a Scotland international and a URC champion with Glasgow.
Now he will be playing in a French second division where several clubs have eight-figure budgets and crowds which give the competition a genuine identity of its own.
That contrast with the debate surrounding England's second tier is difficult to ignore. French rugby has certainly not solved every financial problem, far from it, Pro D2 demonstrates what can happen when the tier beneath the elite becomes a competition that supporters genuinely want to watch rather than simply a development mechanism for the league above.
Thursday night rugby
Then there is perhaps Pro D2's greatest attraction, it always feels different. Like with National League Rugby the clubs remain rooted in towns where rugby is woven into local identity.
Brive. Béziers. Agen. Dax. Biarritz. Grenoble. Narbonne. Montauban.
These aren't simply professional rugby franchises they are considered institutions within their communities.
This is club rugby on steroids.
The new season begins on Thursday 27 August with fixtures including Provence against Agen, Brive against Valence Romans, Dax against newly promoted Narbonne and Grenoble against Aurillac, while Nice travel to Biarritz for their first match back at this level.
Thirty rounds later, some of the clubs will have survived one of European rugby's most demanding campaigns and a few will have earned the opportunity to join the Top 14. Relegation looms heavy with clubs facing the brutal prospect of dropping into Nationale.
For TRU followers, there is now another reason to keep an eye on it.
A former Sedgley Park hooker who became a Glasgow Warriors record-breaker is about to discover Pro D2 for himself.
