Everybody dreams of playing for Toulouse. But what is the story of Melvyn Jaminet, a €450,000 loan and a potential salary cap breach and forced relegation?
Across much of the length and breadth of Europe you’ll struggle to find a city where football isn’t the primary sport. But in the Pink City of Toulouse, around 700km south of Paris, is a dynasty of the oval-balled kind.
While the city’s top-flight football team can claim three Ligue 2 titles and a Coupe de France trophy to its name, the rugby team – Le Stade Les Rouge et Noir, or Stade Toulouse – boast six European crowns, 23 domestic titles and a host of other cups.
Players such as Toby Flood, Thierry Dusautoir, Jerome Kaino and Cheslin Kolbe have donned the famous jersey, and today the side boasts Antoine Dupont, Romain Ntamack, Blair Kinghorn and Jack Willis among a roster of galacticos.
Toulouse and Jaminet transfer
One player not on their books, however, is Melvyn Jaminet, who at the age of 25 has had quite the turbulent career.
Having been at USA Perpignan from 2019-2022, the Hyeres-born Frenchman joined Toulouse in 2022 and then Toulon in 2023, where he returned to the pitch this month following a lengthy ban for a racist post on social media.
Why does a Toulon player who played just a handful of times for Toulouse matter? Because Jaminet is at the centre of allegations that could see the European champions fined for financial misdemeanours and possibly even relegated.
According to widespread reports across the Channel, first disclosed by L’Equipe, Jaminet allegedly took out bank loans – and subsequently went into debt – to the tune of €450,000 to buy out his contract at Perpignan and allow him to move to Toulouse.
L’Equipe reports that a plan was put in place for Toulouse to pay Jaminet back through a series of companies. They suggest that the Frenchman wasn’t reimbursed in full, meaning one intermediary could have withheld their portion of payment. And the deal as a whole could therefore have been a way to keep the payment off the French club’s wage bill – which could in theory have pushed them over the league’s salary cap.
The reaction
Toulon president Bernard Lemaitre said: “Stade Toulousain’s role is central in all of this. Morally, they only have one thing to do, which is to give the money back to Melvyn.
“Their editing is not secret, that’s over. [He is] a bit at rock bottom because he no longer knows how to manage financially. I’m fed up with having a player… who is not in the best shape because he has been robbed.”
Added Lemaitre: “He’s taken out loans that he can’t afford, while there’s a creditor who owes him money in a scandalous way.”
And now the transfer dealings Lemaitre describes as “scandalous” are in the hands of Samuel Gauthier, the salary-cap manager of the LNR (National Rugby League). And France is famous for being tough on finances in their rugby pyramid.
History says…
Within the last decade Biarritz, Bourgoin and Narbonne were told they’d be dropped into the third-tier Federale 1 by the financial watchdog, while Toulon faced huge fines relating to the transfer of Kolbe in 2021 and a lack of “co-operation” with the authorities. Last year Biarritz had to prove their financial viability amid threats of further punishment.
Toulouse, in the case of Jaminet, this month confirmed “formalised exchanges between Stade Toulousain and the National Rugby League,” but added there had been “factually inaccurate statements, which Stade Toulousain does not intend to comment on at this time”.
If there was foul play, and indeed the salary cap investigation returns an unsavoury result for the champions, they could see themselves fined or, at worst, relegated to the ProD2.
Toulouse legacy
Sport business expert Prof Rob Wilson says an unlikely but possible relegation of Toulouse “would send shockwaves across European rugby” and that the move would present challenges which combine the commercial imperative of having giants Toulouse in a competition such as the Top 14 or Champions Cup, disruption to the sporting integrity of French rugby and the impact on player wages and club revenue.
“Rugby often sets the [moral] benchmark for other sports,” Wilson adds. “Perhaps culturally it is able to do so and these punishments are intended to punish rather than be a slap on the wrist – Saracens’ relegation [for salary cap breaches] is a good example of this.
“That can help with longer term behavioural change which would be welcomed across the sport, where rugby unions’ financial health is under massive scrutiny.”
Could a team who are favourites to win a record seventh Investec Champions Cup this year face the chop from their domestic league? If Toulouse has skirted the cap for their own gain then it is certainly a possibility – and it could shift the tectonic plates of rugby in the process.
But at the centre of this is a player in Jaminet who had to fork out €450,000 on a potentially unkept promise. How Monsieur Gauthier reports back his findings following his investigation could change the legacy of a dynasty forever.