PLAYER TRANSFER NEWS: Gerry Thornleyon the situation whereby many of Ireland's top players are nearing the end of their contracts, and the big European clubs are circling

THIS IS the meat of the season in many ways, not to mention the festive season, and it’s also the silly season. A raft of Irish players are coming to the end of their existing contracts, at the end of June or the conclusion of next year’s World Cup in October, and until such time as it is announced that individual players have signed new deals with their provinces and the IRFU, they will be linked with moves to clubs abroad.

In part, this is because they the players, or more pertinently their representatives, wouldn’t be doing their jobs right if they didn’t explore their market value abroad before signing new contracts.

So it was that both Donncha O’Callaghan and Ronan O’Gara were linked with French clubs and, hey presto, a couple of weeks later the IRFU were announcing they had signed new two-year international contracts keeping them with Munster until the end of the 2012-’13 season.

Along with O’Callaghan and O’Gara, Stephen Ferris at Ulster has a signed a new two-year international contract with the IRFU, but pretty much every other leading Irish provincial player will be out of contract at the end of the World Cup – as in the case of Brian O’Driscoll and Paul O’Connell – or at the end of the current season come the end of June, for example Jamie Heaslip, Jonathan Sexton, Seán O’Brien (supposed attracting the strong interest of Leicester Tigers), Seán Cronin and Andrew Trimble, to name but a few.

Much though there is to recommend about the Irish system, with players well looked after under the player welfare programme, quite why the IRFU leave their negotiations regarding new deals until into the last season of their existing contracts is curious, to say the least.

Sexton, like Heaslip, O’Brien and several other Leinster players such as Dominic Ryan, Eoin O’Malley and Jack McGrath, is managed by Fintan Drury, and the outhalf’s is a particularly interesting case.

Previously on a relative pittance until being promoted to a provincial contract over the last two seasons, when he broke into the Ireland team a year ago there was a strong case for the IRFU to offer him a new, improved international contract there and then.

If they had done, it would probably have saved them money compared to any new contract they are offering him at the moment.

It would also have made for a more contented, happier player. Instead, Stade Français and the former Leinster coach Michael Cheika are monitoring Sexton’s situation closely, along with a few other Leinster players, and are believed to value the player as worthy of €550,000 per annum.

Perhaps the IRFU did offer Sexton an improved deal then, but given nothing has still been signed – and a couple of sources confirm negotiations regarding a new deal opened in the summer – it strongly suggests the IRFU are not meeting Sexton’s value as a goalkicking out-half.

It is also understood Toulouse might be interested in the player, although this also hinges on the future of the Stade outhalf Lionel Beauxis, who has been strongly linked with Toulouse.

An important point to remember in all of this is the English clubs, with their salary cap of €5 million a year, are unlikely to lure a leading Irish player abroad, whereas one of the top five or six French clubs, if there were of a mind to, would almost certainly outbid the IRFU.

Furthermore, the Irish provinces have upped the ante and the market value of home-grown players by spending so lavishly on the likes of Rocky Elsom and Felipe Contepomi at Leinster, Doug Howlett and others at Munster, and the Springboks contingent at Ulster.

Their indigenous team-mates and their representatives wouldn’t have been the last to notice this.

The IRFU may look at the example of Tommy Bowe, whose three-year deal is said to be worth more than €1.12 million, and deduce it saved them considerable money while at the same time the player is still available to Ireland.

Ulster were the biggest losers there, as Leinster would be were Sexton (or Heaslip or O’Brien and co) to depart to France.

But this too could be a false saving, for then Leinster would be obliged to look abroad for a goalkicking outhalf of requisite standard for leading Heineken Cup and Magners League contenders who would be non-Irish and, most likely, every bit as expensive.

Heaslip, who would have any number of French suitors including, most obviously Cheika, Sexton and O’Brien, possibly all feel they are being valued below their market worth – and by all accounts O’Brien has been.

But they all have to weigh up departing for bigger salaries with their longer term welfare, commercial value at home, international prospects and, in Heaslip’s case, most probably the Irish captaincy.

One or two may yet fly the coop, but the likelihood is the majority will stay, with the Connacht-based Cronin, at the centre of an Irish tug of war, liable to end up in Leinster rather than Munster given the greater potential career advancement.

But for the moment Joe Schmidt and Mick Dawson, especially, must be tearing their hair out.