The former Wallabies captain told 2GB his French trial was kept from him. The rulings add a number he left out.
Rocky Elsom was man of the match when Leinster won their first Heineken Cup in 2009. Asked on 2GB whether he could be arrested if he went to Europe now, he said: “I… would be arrested. Yeah.”
Ben Fordham checked the detail. “For setting foot in Europe?” Elsom narrowed it. “In the European Union. Yeah.”
In October 2024 he was coaching at a Dublin school when a court in Narbonne convicted him in his absence. He left Ireland as Irish police went to his home and workplace to execute the warrant, the Irish Times reported.
He was still inside the EU when the trial happened, he told Fordham, because he did not know it was on. “It was… tight there.”
Everything else he said in an eleven-minute interview can be checked against the French rulings. Some of it holds. One number never came up. If you were Rocky Elsom, would you go back to France and face that court in person?
What is Rocky Elsom accused of?
Rocky Elsom, 43, won 75 Tests for Australia and captained them from 2009. He was president of Narbonne from 2015 to 2016, when the club played in Pro D2, the division below the Top 14.
A French court has convicted him of misusing the club’s assets while he ran it. He denies wrongdoing and has appealed. On Ben Fordham Live on Thursday 17 September, he argued that his first trial was kept from him and that the last charge should go.
The full interview. The exchange about Europe starts at 3:24.
The trial he says nobody told him about
Fordham opened by asking how he was holding up. Elsom went straight to the trial.
“I think the… big thing to… point out is they went to great lengths to hide this trial, so… my trial from me, the existence of it… occurring at all, which is a very big thing.”
“And after two years, the prosecutor hasn’t answered as to why they would do that. Why is it in the public’s interest to keep me uninformed about my own trial?”
He acknowledged that France can try a defendant who is not there. His objection is to a trial with nobody arguing his side. “But to have it without a defense, that’s… without a human right in… the European Union.”
The first trial ended on Friday 11 October 2024 with a five-year sentence.
The interview skipped what came next. French law lets a defendant convicted in his absence lodge an opposition, which cancels the judgment and forces a new trial. Elsom lodged one.
The case was heard again on Friday 14 February 2025, his 42nd birthday. He stayed away. His lawyer, Yann Le Bras, asked the court to throw out the case and the arrest warrant on procedural grounds, France 3 reported.
The court said no. His complaint about the 2024 trial still stands. The defence he says he was denied was heard in 2025 all the same.
Read also: Shane Howarth won 19 Wales caps before Grannygate erased them. He never played again.
Narbonne’s record season was real
Rocky Elsom’s pride is in the rugby. He arrived at Narbonne in 2013.
“Well, they took a big step back when I arrived because I was 30 years old and the club was in a very bad financial position and they just didn’t think it was going to work.”
“So, they took a very public step back, but in that season, we broke every record in the club’s history. We erased a massive deficit and we nearly won the comp.”
The results are on the record. Narbonne finished fifth in Pro D2 in 2013-14 with 801 points, the second-highest total in the league, and reached the promotion semi-finals.
Agen beat them 25-17 in that semi-final on Sunday 18 May 2014. So “nearly won the comp” means a semi-final defeat. It was still a season a club in “a very bad financial position” could be proud of.
The “massive deficit” he says he erased is harder to check.
The club he calls rich was relegated for money in 2016
He brought the club’s financial reports into the studio.
“So the financial reports from the time that I left, not lodged by me, lodged by the guys after I had left, show the club… was in the best financial position of all time. And at very least 3 million euros better than when I first received the club.”
Neither Elsom nor 2GB has published those documents. The public record from his last season points the other way.
At the end of May 2016, the DNACG, French rugby’s financial watchdog, relegated Narbonne to Fédérale 1, the third tier, along with Biarritz and Bourgoin.
The broadcaster franceinfo reported that the club, majority-owned by Elsom, was struggling to close its budget after talks with a Qatari fund fell through.
Narbonne won the appeal and stayed in Pro D2. The professional company was liquidated in 2018 with €885,000 of liabilities, two years after Elsom left.
The timing helps him, and he leans on it. The one charge left, he told Fordham, is “linked to a liquidation which happened after I left and because they didn’t win enough games”. The case against him, as France 3 reported it, blames his management.
The one charge left carries a €219,760 bill
Fordham asked him straight.
Fordham: “For the record, Rocky Elsom, have you misused corporate funds or assets?”
Elsom: “No. And they’re not actually alleging that I did.”
The charge still standing is misuse of corporate assets. French law defines it as using a company’s property against its interests. The use has to serve your own ends, or a business you have a stake in.
The number he never mentioned is the bill that comes with it.
| First trial, October 2024 | Retrial, judged March 2025 | |
|---|---|---|
| Convicted of | Forgery, use of forgery, misuse of corporate assets | Misuse of corporate assets |
| Prison | Five years | Two years |
| Money | Repay €705,000 to the club’s liquidator | €100,000 fine, half suspended, plus €219,760 compensation |
| In court | No | No, represented by his lawyer |
Sources: France 3 Occitanie, 13 February and 14 March 2025; Reuters, 14 March 2025. France 3 reported the sum owed to the liquidator’s side as €240,000.
France 3’s report of the March 2025 ruling set out the case made by the liquidator’s lawyer, Patrick Tabet. It included €7,200 a month for a general manager in Australia who never came to work. It also included €79,000 paid to a former coach. Elsom contests the accusations.
The charges he called ridiculous were the lighter ones
He told Fordham the original charges amounted to damages “possibly in the hundreds of euros”. The forgery counts are gone, so on that part of the case the record is with him.
“So, the forgery didn’t meet the definition of forgery. I signed my name on the date… end of story, of course, they withdrew it.”
In November 2024 the Irish Times reported his account of one forgery charge. It concerned a doctor’s employment agreement, signed on 15 July for a job that began on 1 July.
The count that survived is the heavier one. In French law that offence carries up to five years and a €375,000 fine. Forgery carries three years and €45,000.
Fordham’s introduction said the most serious charges had been dismissed. On the statute book, it is the other way round.
At the retrial the prosecution wanted three years in prison and a €630,000 fine. The court gave him less on both. Le Bras appealed the same day, telling France 3 that a partial acquittal and a large cut in damages were not enough.
The retrial cut his sentence. It did not clear him
Five years became two. A €705,000 repayment order became about €220,000 in compensation.
On every number reported from the two rulings, Rocky Elsom has gained ground since 2024. He has not won. A conviction stands with a bill attached, and no public report gives the appeal a hearing date.
Meanwhile the case follows him around Australian rugby. Fordham said a mate had told him that “when we see Rocky we kind of put our heads down a little bit”. Elsom did not argue.
“Yeah, of course. And that’s completely understandable. So this has been going on for 10 years. The… newspaper articles coming out of France… after I left were constantly talking about this. So in rugby terms, in rugby circles, you couldn’t be employed.”
He believes that was the aim. “They didn’t want me to work in rugby again and… that’s fine,” he said.
If the reports he carried into the studio show what he says, the appeal court is where they will count.
He can watch the Wallabies he once led play the Springboks in Perth on Sunday 27 September without leaving Australia. Narbonne are back in Pro D2 this season, after coming from behind to beat Nice 23-20 in the Nationale final on Saturday 16 May.
Their former president would be arrested if he flew in to watch.
Your turn
Two ways to see it.
One: a man tried without being told is entitled to stay away until an appeal court hears him.
Two: he has already had a retrial with his lawyer in the room, and the case will follow him until he faces it.
Would you go back to France and face it, or stay in Queensland and wait?
Frequently asked
What is Rocky Elsom accused of? Misuse of corporate assets while he ran the Narbonne rugby club in France. The Narbonne criminal court convicted him at a retrial in March 2025 and dropped the forgery counts from his 2024 conviction. Rocky Elsom denies wrongdoing and has appealed.
Why can’t Rocky Elsom go to Europe? France has an international arrest warrant out for him, renewed in March 2025. He told 2GB on Thursday 17 September that he would be arrested if he entered the European Union.
What was Rocky Elsom’s sentence? Five years in October 2024, cut to two years at the March 2025 retrial. He was also fined €100,000, half of it suspended, and ordered to pay €219,760 in compensation to the club’s liquidator, according to Reuters. The appeal is pending.
Where does Rocky Elsom live now? In Queensland, where he has lived since late 2024 after leaving Ireland.
