Haskell risks wrath from Stade to stay with England camp

James Haskell, the flanker at the centre of an increasingly fractious tug of love spanning the English Channel, was suffering from a touch of the collywobbles yesterday, and with good reason. As his principal employers, the Parisian club Stade Français, continued to express their anger at his absence from training ahead of tomorrow's match with Toulouse, the man in charge of his international career, Martin Johnson, insisted he would make "no compromises" in his preparations for next weekend's Calcutta Cup match with Scotland. It left Haskell in a perilous position: between an old lock and a hard place, you might say.

After three days of confusion over who had agreed what with whom in respect of the player's move from Wasps last summer, the England manager, together with Twickenham's director of elite rugby Rob Andrew, went some way towards clarifying the situation. No, there had not been any formal agreement between the Rugby Football Union and Stade Français concerning Haskell's release for international training camps; no, the RFU was not aware of the details of Haskell's contract; yes, Haskell had assured the England hierarchy that he was available to train with them as and when required. And the upshot? "It's a matter between James and his club," Andrew said. "All we're doing is going by what he and his lawyer tell us."

Haskell was at the red-rose base in Surrey yesterday, but did not train after picking up a stomach bug. "I've spoken to the doctor, and he tells me these symptoms can't be faked," joked Johnson, who filled the gap by calling the Wasps loose-forward Joe Worsley into the squad. Should Worsley receive the nod for the match in Edinburgh – hardly out of the question, given the poor performance of the England back row against Ireland last Saturday – Haskell may find himself missing out on two major occasions in seven days.

Acting on information from the player, Johnson considered himself well within his rights to keep Haskell in camp rather than release him back to Stade Français. Unfortunately, the Parisians took the opposite view, pointing to International Rugby Board regulations that give clubs first call on Test players during the two "dead" weeks of the Six Nations. Their president and financier-in-chief, the flamboyant media mogul Max Guazzini, publicly ordered Haskell to get himself back across the water. When that order fell on deaf ears, Guazzini issued his major summer signing with a written warning and promised to raise the matter with the governing committee of the tournament.

Johnson was wholly unmoved. "All the way through, we've talked about this with the players who went to France," he said. "The position was made clear: we told them that wherever they were playing, they needed to be available to us on the agreed dates. It was my decision to keep him in camp, and it is James' understanding that he can be with us. He doesn't think he's doing anything wrong."

The affair is, however, causing concern in the higher echelons of the England operation. "We spent a lot of time talking to the French clubs about this last year and relations on the ground have been excellent," Andrew said. "We always knew this might happen at some point, though. What we must do now is make sure we have everything covered off for next season, because 2011 is World Cup year and we don't want fights and complications when we're trying to build for that tournament. We had plenty of all that when we were negotiating our agreement with the English clubs. We don't want to go through it again with the French."

Yesterday was not a great day for Stade Français in any respect. Their international prop David Attoub, banned for a withering 70 weeks after being found guilty of gouging the flanker Stephen Ferris during a Heineken Cup pool match with Ulster in December, lost his appeal against conviction and sentence and must wait until late April of next year to play again. The Stade scrum-half Julien Dupuy is currently serving a 23-week ban for gouging the same player in the same game.