Rugby Union: Saracens Head Big-money Europe Scrum to Hook Paul

The exodus of top players from the southern hemisphere after the autumn World Cup gained another member yesterday when the Australia hooker Jeremy Paul said he would be moving to Europe, where Saracens head the queue for the 30-year old's signature. The 72-cap Paul's contract with the ACT Brumbies ends this year and he said he would make an announcement on his playing future before the end of the month.

Unions in the south cannot compete with the salaries that leading clubs in France and England are able to offer, as New Zealand admitted yesterday after the All Blacks' prop Carl Hayman signed for Newcastle. The New Zealand Rugby Union desperately tried to keep the 27-year old Hayman, offering to boost his salary by also sponsoring his farm, but the tight-head signed a three-year deal with the Falcons which is worth a reported £1m.

"The incredible amounts of money on offer in the UK and France are making it increasingly difficult for us to compete on straight dollar terms despite tremendous commercial support from our partners," said the NZRU deputy chief executive, Steve Tew. "We put our best possible offer in front of Carl and we are grateful he gave it serious consideration. The dollars available overseas are a significant challenge. Our response has been to create the world's best rugby environment in New Zealand. We have invested in world-class academies and high-performance programmes and underpinning this is our philosophy that to wear the All Blacks jersey you must play in domestic competitions."

The New Zealand coach, Graham Henry, expects Hayman to return home in 2010 to compete for a place in the All Blacks' World Cup squad the following year. "I think Carl wants a new lease of life, a change of scenery, those sorts of lifestyle factors," he said. "He is a great team guy and hugely respected, and we hope he comes back and plays for the All Blacks again, but there is always the risk of someone going well in his absence. There is a lot of money in the game in the UK and France but I am not sure whether buying teams is benefiting them."

The purchasing power of the major clubs will be discussed when Premier Rugby and the Rugby Football Union meet the International Rugby Board chairman, Syd Millar, at Heathrow on Saturday week. The gathering has been arranged ostensibly to find a way through the impasse whereby the Premiership clubs have followed the French out of the Heineken Cup, but Europe will be part of wider talks on how the game is governed.

The Heineken Cup's organising body, European Rugby Cup Ltd, meets on May 8 but that is not the deadline for the Premiership clubs to return. The RFU has come under pressure to save the tournament by agreeing to hand over some of its shares on ERC to the clubs, but it is standing firm. "There is a misconception that we are not prepared to give shares to the clubs," said the RFU's management board chairman, Martyn Thomas. "That is not true and it is not an issue in itself, but we are only prepared to discuss it as part of a new agreement over the management of elite players. We have tended to fudge things over the years and keep finding ourselves in the position we are now in. We have to sort it out once and for all. I appreciate the potential financial plight the Celts face but they will gain nothing if we apply another sticking-plaster solution."

A watered down Heineken Cup would impact hardest on the Scottish Rugby Union, which lost another player yesterday when the Border Reivers and Scotland scrum-half Chris Cusiter joined Perpignan on a two-year deal.

The Reivers captain Cusiter, who has won 31 Scotland caps, leaves the club with hope fading that the soon-to-be-disbanded team will earn a reprieve. The Scottish RU announced last month that the Reivers would be wound up at the end of this season as the governing body struggles with debts of about £23m.