CAPTAIN Jim Hamilton will leave Gloucester at the end of the season, with Montpellier closing in on a three-year deal for the talisman second row.
Rival French Top 14 outfit Racing Metro are also battling for the Scotland lock's signature – and both clubs are prepared to buy him out of the final year of his Gloucester contract.
The 30-year-old's current Kingsholm deal has one more season to run, but both cash-rich French clubs are comfortable with paying Gloucester the compensation to prise him across The Channel.
Kingsholm bosses simply could not compete with the whopping offers – and have agreed not to stand in the club skipper's way, provided they receive a substantial transfer fee.
Hamilton's departure will deal the first real blow to Nigel Davies' embryonic but so-far impressive Kingsholm stewardship.
The new rugby director talked Hamilton out of leaving Gloucester in the summer, when the powerful lock was courted by Paris club Racing in pre-season.
Davies has made good on all his pre-season promises to Hamilton, and the engine room enforcer has been impressed with the turnaround at Gloucester after fearing for the club's future progress in the Bryan Redpath fallout.
So now the club captain will set about trying to lead Gloucester to silverware success in his third and final season at Kingsholm.
But these new offers from France dwarf even the big money that was bandied about during the summer.
And Hamilton – clearly thinking about setting up for life after rugby – has simply viewed the chance as far too lucrative to ignore.
Gloucester for their part have trucked no argument with the situation, forced to bow to the superior buying and bartering power of the French.
It is not as though the Cherry and Whites are alone in being unable to keep pace with spending across the pond.
Only this week Welsh flanker Dan Lydiate confirmed he would leave Newport Dragons, and he is thought bound for Racing Metro.
The Parisians have also reportedly snared Cardiff and British Lions centre Jamie Roberts, plus Northampton prop duo Soane Tonga'uhia and Brian Mujati.
England's £4.2-million squad salary cap is just the tip of a worrying iceberg.
The Welsh regions are struggling to find the money to hit their £3.5-million self-imposed new salary caps, while in the Premiership only perhaps Bath and Saracens would have the wherewithal and the stomach to go toe-to-toe with the French were the English salary cap removed.
The biggest challenge for boss Davies now will be to recruit a suitable replacement.
And it is now increasingly likely the Cherry and Whites will seek two new locks for next season.
Alex Brown's season-ending shoulder injury leaves the Kingsholm club one man light this term, and Davies is already casting around in a bid to bring in a lock on a deal until the end of the campaign.
But beyond that Davies and Gloucester will need further and longer-term reinforcements in the engine room, especially given the general feeling they entered this campaign light in that department in any case.
