Have you missed us? Course you have! To make up for our absence, here are the best bits of French rugby news you missed over the last few weeks...

Caucau settles for Toulouse

The Rupeni Caucaunibuca saga ended - for the time being - with the wayward Fijian finally leaving Agen to join Toulouse after the Lot-et-Garonne club agreed to accept a transfer fee well below the €150,000 they were asking for the player.

Toulouse's Fijian winger Vilimoni Delasau was said to be instrumental in the move, which sees Caucau move to Stade Ernest-Wallon as a medical joker for injured centre Yann David.

A month on and the short-on-fitness Fijian has yet to appear in his new club's colours, although he is expected to line up for Toulouse's reserve side against Toulon this Sunday and is pencilled in to play for the French Barbarians (coached by Toulouse's own Guy Noves) against Tonga in Grenoble on November 26.

Wiz for Oz?

Jonathan Wisniewski should make his international debut in the next few weeks after being called into the French squad for the autumn internationals.

The 25-year-old has made the Racing-Metro No.10 shirt his own since joining the club four years ago, despite competition from international fly-halves Andrew Mehrtens and Juan-Martin Hernandez, and earned his place in Marc Lievremont's squad after Montpellier's Francois Trinh-Duc was ruled out with a hamstring injury.

Lievremont also called up the uncapped trio of Perpignan prop Jerome Schuster, Bayonne winger Yoann Huget and Brive centre Fabrice Estebanez, but there was no room for Stade Francais centre Mathieu Bastareaud or Toulouse backs Clement Poitrenaud and Vincent Clerc.

France play Fiji in Nantes on November 13 before facing Argentina in Montpellier a week later and Australia in Paris on November 27.

New jersey nuts

The start of the European campaigns gave Top 14 sides a chance to wheel out more new jerseys for the occasion. Toulon ditched their traditional red and black for a blue and white cartoon-inspired maillot, while Bayonne swapped their own blue and white for a jersey described as 'chocolate' but which must have been at least 95% cocoa as it looked black to us.

Perpignan followed the game's floral trend with a red shirt embossed with flowers, while Stade Francais, already three shirts to the good this season with their pink, blue and 'faces' jerseys, unleashed a fourth on the public at their gala clash with Toulon. The 'Leopard' jersey features pink and blue animal prints and a pink fleur de lys, and will cost the keen Stadiste an eye-watering €99.

A l'eau, c'est l'heure!

The club's advertising campaign for the Toulon match also broke new ground in terms of bizarre imagery. Perhaps taking a swipe at Toulon owner Mourad Boudjellal's comic strip business, the poster (below) featured a battleship crashing into Stade de France, Toulon players disembarking and a leopard-skinned Parisian calling his teammates to battle. No, we didn't understand it either, but it clearly did the trick as Paris ran out 22-15 winners.

Hooking up

As the end of the year approaches, clubs' thoughts turn to the spring recruitment drive, with Welsh outside-half James Hook the current marquee import. Hook has been linked with a move to Perpignan after next year's Rugby World Cup in a deal said to be worth £300,000 a season. League regulations prevent clubs from announcing any deals until February, which is when, coincidentally, Hook says he'll be making a decision on where his future lies.

Hook's club and country teammate Lee Byrne has also been linked with a cross-channel move to Clermont. Midi Olympique says the French champions are looking to strengthen their back three, and with his Ospreys contract coming to an end the rugby paper claims Byrne is their man. They've also, apparently, expressed an interest in signing All Blacks centre Luke McAlister, as have Agen.

Win some, Toulouse some

Internally, Toulouse seem to be at the dizzy heart of the transfer merry-go-round. With 11 first-teamers, including Byron Kelleher, Freddy Michalak and David Skrela, coming to the end of their Ernest-Wallon contracts in June, Guy Noves is targeting replacement international half-backs in the shape of Clermont scrum-half Morgan Parra and Stade Francais fly-half Lionel Beauxis.

The word from all camps is that 25-year-old Beauxis is already packing his bags for the south west, while Parra may prefer to stay with the French champions: if he does, Dimitri Yachvili is said to be ready to make the move from Biarritz. The summer could yet see further half-back movement, with Damien Traille and Francois Trinh-Duc both out of contract at the end of the season.

Several Toulouse players are targeted by other clubs, notably France captain Thierry Dusautoir, who is wanted by Racing-Metro, as are prop Patricio Albacete and prop Census Johnston.

Who, me?

Inevitably, Toulon's cash isn't far from the table, with the mediterraneans planning to tempt internationals Alexis Palisson and Fabrice Estebanez from Brive. But it doesn't sound as though owner Mourad Boudjellal is planning to break the bank to tempt any more galacticos to the Cote d'Azur. Boudjellal told l'Equipe that the asking price for All Black fly-half Dan Carter was €1.2m a year - far too much even for this big spender.

"Is this reasonable?'' he asked in late September. "€1.2 million for Dan Carter a season for a three-year contract. Everyone is put off by that price.

"In the current climate of rugby, this has crossed the line."

It's been a while, but we hope we're not the first to point out that it was Boudjellal who once paid another All Black, Tana Umaga, half a million euros to play seven matches for Toulon back in 2006, and, according to kiwi coach Graham Henry, offered Sonny Bill Williams more than €3m to stay in France before he opted to return to New Zealand in the summer.

Jiff's all washed up

The final whistle of next year's Rugby World Cup could signal a dash for French cash among the world's players, with Ronan O'Gara, Brian O'Driscoll and Australian Quade Cooper all mentioned alongside Carter, Hook, Byrne and McAlister in despatches (although with seemingly little or no evidence) as eyeing a move to France this time next year.

But what of the newly enforced home-grown player quotas, I hear you ask? Next season Top 14 sides are required to have 18 French players in their 35-man squads, but as the first three months of next year's Top 14 will run parallel with the World Cup and warm-up games, the league is hoping the French Rugby Federation will relax the rules.

It's also likely that each Top 14 club will be allowed to sign up to six additional players to cover for their World Cup absentees, but that they will be able to keep these 'jokers' on for the rest of the 2011/12 season. What's more, the fact that 12 of the Top 14's 26 matches will clash with international fixtures means that the play-off structure will be altered for one year, with the top eight teams in the final table progressing to the knockout stages.

As it was the home-grown (or Jiff - Joueurs issus de la formation francaise) regulations have already been compromised so that by 2012/13, clubs would only have had to meet a 60% quota rather than the 70% originally set. The year's hiatus will only serve to restore the free-market status quo and give the clubs more time to fight what some still see as an unfair regulation.

Baa-Baas' Argie bargie

League regulations put paid to the French Barbarians' 30th Anniversary clash with Argentina this weekend. The match was scheduled for Stade Charlety this Saturday (November 6), but because the teams' management were unable to select any players involved in Thursday night's Top 14 matches nor any current French squad members, Baa-Baas officials Jean-Pierre Rives and Serge Blanco had no choice but to cancel the game.

The Baa-Baas will now play Tonga in Grenoble later in November and will field a team that contains France rejects Vincent Clerc, Maxime Mermoz and Mathieu Bastareaud as well as George Smith, Cedric Heymans, Carl Hayman, Louis Picamoles, Jerome Thion and, making his final appearance on a rugby field, Jean-Baptiste Elissalde.

On your vélo(drome)

Toulon don't seem to be as welcome at their Marseille home-from-home as they thought. Despite playing several matches at the city's Stade Vélodrome over the past two seasons, Mourad Boudjellal and his players may have noticed a banner at Olympique Marseille's Champions League game in October that read "RCT: Reste Chez Toi" (RCT: Stay at Home).

The supporters' club treasurer attempted to laugh it off as a poor executed joke and apologised to Boudjellal and the club for the banner. But with the football club's fans recently banned from travelling to their French league match with Paris Saint Germain following the death of a supporter, loyal Toulonnais may think twice before heading west to the club's next délocalisation.