Some Crazed French Comic Book Billionaire Keeps Buying Our Best Players For His Avengers-Style Rugby Team

Name a high profile rugby union or rugby league player from the past 15 years and chances are they have played for the obscure provincial French rugby team known as RC Toulon. Owned by the zany comic book billionaire, Mourad Boudjellal, the team has lured everyone former-Wallabies captain George Gregan to former-All Blacks captain Tana Umaga, former-NRL star Sonny Bill Williams to South African international Bakkies Botha, Welsh international Leigh Halfpenny to English international sir Jonny Wilkinson, plus a dozen more. All have donned the red and black of Toulon in exchange for exorbitant sums of money and the chance to fulfil one incredibly rich man's dream of restoring his beloved childhood rugby team to its former glory.

The recent bombshell that leading Parramatta Eels National Rugby League star, Semi Radradra, will join the club in 2018, along with rumours All Blacks duo Israel Dagg and Malakai Fekitoa will follow, marks the latest chapter in what is surely the most diabolically cunning player thefts in the history of the game.

The dynasty that is Toulon rugby since Boudjellal took over ten years ago reads like a bizarre comic strip. And that's no coincidence. The comic book billionaire has a keen sense of narrative in life as he does in art, and his rugby team adds another dimension to it. "I am the leader of heroic fantasy in comics, (Toulon) was a little heroic fantasy in rugby," he has said.

The son of immigrants from the former-French colony of Algeria, Boudjellal grew up in Toulon's red light district. As a child he was captivated by the cro-magnon characters and collisions of the local rugby team, back when they were little more than an amateur outfit bouncing between the first and second tiers of the French league.

In 1982, aged 22, Boudjellal began his comic book empire under the title Libraire Bedule, later changing it to Soleil, whereupon it developed into something like the European version of Marvel comics (in 2008 Soleil and Marvel agreed to collaborate on the translation of several Soleil classics into English). Over the years the business grew to employ up to 450 people and generate up to $65 million in revenue each year. His comics would also form the vanguard of story-telling about minority women in French popular culture. Five years after he entered the comic book trade, Toulon won its first French rugby championship in over 50 years. By 2000 they were in debt 10 million francs and banished to the second division by the French rugby administration as a result. Boudjellal took control of Toulon rugby club in 2006 at a time when they were close to bankruptcy and still languishing in the obscurity of the French second division. In a scene eerily reminiscent of that Simpsons episode where Mr Burns gets Darryl Strawberry to play for his Nuclear Power Plant softball team, Boudjellal somehow managed to lure former All Blacks captain, Tana Umaga, to the club despite still being buried in the second division. It was an acquisition even Boudjellal couldn't believe.

"It was incredible, because we were in the second division and I was speaking with the best player in the world. But he said yes and came to play with Toulon," he said in a 2010 interview.

With Umaga's help Toulon earned promotion to the top tier immediately, so beginning the most bizarre and opulent cavalcade of international rugby talent to one club the game has ever seen. The following season Boudjellal announced the signings of former Wallabies captain, George Gregan, alongside the late great All Black number eight, Jerry Collins (aka Mr Granite) as well as 1995 World Cup winning All Black Andrew Mehrtens.

But it was the following season when he poached a 23 year old Sonny Bill Williams, at the peak of his powers, that both rugby union and rugby league stopped to pay attention. SBW was fresh off a premiership win with NRL club the Canterbury Bulldogs and arguably the greatest talent the game had seen. He was also just 18 months into a five year contract when he walked out on the club mid-season. The saga installed Boudjellal as the comic vaudevillian of world rugby.

Of his decision, SBW said simply: "Two words: Tana Umaga. Simple as that. I can learn a lot from him," though the estimated $AUD1.5 million he was being paid per season must surely have entered the equation.Boudjellal was just getting started. Over the coming seasons he would acquire 50 cap South African veteran, Joe Van Niekerk, All Black centre Ma'a Nonu, South African internationals Bryan Habana and Bakkies Botha, Welsh international Leigh Halfpenny, Wallabies Drew Mitchell, James O'Connor and Quade Cooper, Englishmen Jonny Wilkinson and French national fly half, Frederic Michalak, just to name a few (he also came close to snaring NRL turned NFL star, Jarryd Hayne). The mass exodus of leading Australian talent to Europe (mostly Toulon), meanwhile, forced the Australian rugby administration to create a new law permitting players based overseas to be play for the national side (previously you had to be based in Australia. The All Blacks still refuse to include players based overseas). It became known as the 'Giteau Law' in honour of the Wallabies great-turned-Toulon playmaker, Matt Giteau.

Boudjellal's investment paid dividends immediately. Toulon claimed three consecutive European titles in 2013, 2014 and 2015, along with a historic double in 2014, when they won both the French Top 14 Championship along with the European championship. Off the field, Toulon's fortunes were also reversed. From finding themselves in enormous debt in 2000, Boudjellal was boasting of a 500% increase in turnover by 2016.

There is one price to pay for anyone who signs up for Toulon, however. Boudjellal's other great claim to fame are the hilariously raw interviews he gives. Like the time he compared Jonny Wilkinson to foie gras and Quade Cooper to pate when asked about the transition between to the two Toulon fly-halves. "It's difficult to go from foie gras to pâté," he'd said of Cooper's mediocre form.

Or the time he accused the referees during a narrow league loss to Claremont in 2012 of fucking him in the arse. "I had my first refereeing sodomy in the [2010] semi-final against Clermont. I've just had my second tonight. It appeared to hurt the first time but it was just as bad this time. We will review the images not on YouTube but on YouPorn," he'd told reporters afterwards, earning himself a 130-day dressing room and pitchside ban from the French Championship.

Or that interview with the Daily Mail earlier this year in which he compared himself to Winston Churchill and French rugby to communism. "I'm not Donald Trump, for sure — perhaps Bernie Sanders . . . or Winston Churchill! But for me, French rugby is communist. They want all the teams to have the same points. Every Saturday, they want matrimony — every game 10-10, 20-20. No losers. No winners. For me, rugby is a show, but here they want everyone as equals. It's communist," he'd said.

Despite the gaffs, Boudjellal is also one of France's staunchest anti-racism crusaders, having gone head to head with the likes of far-right politician, Marine Le Pen, in televised debates and lobbing verbal grenades at the French rugby establishment.

"French rugby is racist. It reflects a France which is very inward-looking and conservative. I've had racist insults hurled at me in stadiums. I regularly receive letters calling me a 'dirty Arab,' telling me I should return to Algeria. [So] no one can give me lessons on morality, education and politeness, especially in the rugby environment," he said in 2012.

The city of Toulon treats Boudjellal like a king. Their 15,800 seat coliseum has today become world famous for offering arguably the most hostile and atmospheric experience outside of international rugby. And how else would a French team owned by an Algerian comic book fantasy peddler create such a thing? With a crazed Frenchmen painted in a fake moko (Maori face-tattoo) chanting a bizarre mash-up of the Haka and a Toulon folk song. You couldn't dream this shit up.