French Rugby Football: A Cultural History

239 Pages·2001·2.766 MB·English

by  Philip Dine

French Rugby Football
Berg French Studies
General Editor: John E. Flower
ISSN:1354-3636
John E. Flower and Bernard C. Swift (eds), François Mauriac: Visions and
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Bill Marshall, Victor Serge: The Uses of Dissent
Allan Morris, Collaboration and Resistance Reviews: Writers and the Mode
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Malcolm Cook, Fictional France: Social Reality in the French Novel
1775–1800
W.D. Halls, Politics, Society and Christianity in Vichy France
David H. Walker, Outrage and Insight: Modern French Writers and the ‘Fait
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David L. Looseley, The Politics of Fun: Cultural Policy and Debate in
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Alex Hughes and Kate Ince, French Erotic Fiction: Women’s Desiring
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French Rugby Football
A Cultural History
Philip Dine
Oxford • New York
First published in 2001 by
Berg
Editorial offices:
150 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JJ, UK
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© Philip Dine 2001
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by
any means without the written permission of Berg.
Berg is the imprint of Oxford International Publishers Ltd.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 1859733220(Cloth)
ISBN 1859733271(Paper)
Typeset by JS Typesetting, Wellingborough, Northants.
Printed in the United Kingdom by Biddles Ltd, Guildford and King’s Lynn.
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction: ‘Only fabulous French can do this’ 1
PartI:The Rise of le rugby-panache, 1880–1914
1 Pioneers and Patriots in Paris 19
2 The Expansion into the Provinces 41
PartII:Rugby Goes to War, 1914–1945
3 Identity and Brutality in the South-West 61
4 French Rugby in the Wilderness 79
5 Maréchal nous voilà! – The Wartime Betrayal of le rugby à treize 95
PartIII:Uncorking le rugby-champagne, 1945–1968
6 The Second Miracle of Lourdes 115
7 ‘Mission Accomplished!’ – 1968 and All That 129
PartIV:Towards a Global Game, 1968–2000
8 The Struggle for the Soul of le rugby français 151
9 Out of Africa: Professionalism’s Winds of Change 171
Conclusion: A la recherche du rugby perdu 193
Bibliography 199
Appendices 211
Index 219
–v–

Acknowledgements
The combination of a lifelong personal involvement in rugby football and
a more recent professional interest in the sport means that my acknowledge-
ments here must reach further back and be spread more widely than is usually
the case in an academic work. It was my late grandfather, Arthur Newsham
(my first French teacher and my first rugby coach), who introduced me to
the union game at Barnstaple in Devon, together with the subtleties of rugby
league at Barrow, in his native Cumbria. Although Barnstaple RFC remains
my sporting home, I also need to thank all those who contributed to my
development both on and off the pitch at Barnstaple Grammar School, North
Devon College, Dundee University, Stirling University, and with the
Combined Scottish Universities.
My initiation into French rugby came as a player in the third division of
the national championship with the Tours Etudiants Club, and my enthu-
siasm for the French way of playing is paralleled by my gratitude for the
hospitality extended to me by lovers of ‘the adopted game’, both at that
time and since. Friends and colleagues in France whose help and encourage-
ment have proved especially valuable include Pierre Arnaud, Jean Camy,
and Thierry Terret at the Centre de Recherche et d’Innovation sur le Sport
in Lyons, Patrick Mignon at the Institut National du Sport et de l’Education
Physique in Paris, and Jean-Pierre Augustin at the Maison des Sciences de
l’Homme d’Aquitaine in Bordeaux. More recently, the encyclopaedic
knowledge of Jean-Pierre Bodis and the passion treiziste of Robert Fassolette
have also been much appreciated. The hospitality and wealth of anecdotes
provided by Michel Fodimbi and Guy Etcheberry and their families in Lyons
and Vienne were as enjoyable as they were valuable. Olivier Nier, formerly
of Grenoble and now at Brive, has also been a precious guide to the modern
French game, not least for those Loughborough students who have been
able to benefit from the links established between the University and the
CA Brive club.
Nearer home, Jean-Pierre Boulé of Tarbes and the Nottingham Trent
University was a regular source of advice and local knowledge. In Leicester,
Richard Holt, a pioneer of French sports history, offered both inspiration
–vii–
Acknowledgements
and encouragement, as, from a sociological perspective, did Ken Sheard.
For its part, the work of British chroniclers of rugby league – including
particularly Geoffrey Moorhouse, Mike Rylance, Phil Fearnley, and Phil
Melling – showed me just how much remains to be said by the scholarly
literature of rugby union. To Ian Henry, of the Department of Physical
Education, Sports Science and Recreation Management at Loughborough
University, I owe special thanks, both for helping me to establish contacts
with researchers in France, and for coaxing me out of retirement to play
for Loughborough RFC’s ‘Vets’ XV. My colleague Jeremy Leaman of the
Department of European Studies and Melton Mowbray RFC is similarly
to be thanked. Nick Bromell’s regularly voiced enthusiasm for the glory
days of the Boniface brothers and Gachassin was particularly appreciated,
coming as it did from a fellow Devonian, and thus almost in spite of himself.
Invaluable financial support for the early stages of this project was provided
by the Nuffield Foundation, and later supplemented by funding from the
Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at Loughborough University.
Without such support this project could never have been brought to fruition.
Mark Szegner, Information Technician in the Department of Geography
at Loughborough University, very generously gave of his time and expertise
to produce the distribution map included in the appendices. Mick Cleary
of the Daily Telegraph, Philip Burnham-Richards of the Hulton Getty Picture
Collection, and Justin Davies at Allsport were all extremely helpful in the
hunt for a suitable jacket illustration. At Berg Publishers, the guidance (and
patience) of Kathryn Earle, Sara Everett, and their colleagues must also be
gratefully acknowledged.
However, those who have done the most to allow this book to be
completed are, as always, my wife Carol, my son John, and my daughter
Morag. On this occasion, the combined exertions, in a sporting context far
removed from the rugby pitch, of Brian Askew, Mark Webber, and the
Peloton de Gendarmerie de Haute Montagne de Chamonix also proved
decisive. I am fortunate indeed to be in a position to record my thanks to
them all here.
–viii–
Introduction: ‘Only fabulous French can do this’
Introduction: ‘Only fabulous French
can do this’
If there is one thing upon which observers of the French people past and
present are generally agreed, it is that France is different. This truism, if
nothing else, unites historians, economists, political scientists, and a wide
variety of cultural commentators, both in France itself and abroad. The
concept of the ‘French exception’ has consequently been widely used to
describe the paradoxical development of the modern French nation-state,
the territorial and social entity born of the Revolution of 1789. Indeed,
this notion has become a central tenet both of the contemporary French
world-view and of the academic discipline of French studies.1 At the core
of the French paradox – be it in the geo-strategic, economic, political, or
conventionally regarded ‘cultural’ domains – is a tradition of success of a
distinctly idiosyncratic kind, often achieved in spite of obvious structural
handicaps. Nowhere has this long-term phenomenon been more readily
apparent in recent years than in a public sphere that might legitimately be
regarded as the modern world’s most visible, because most intensely
mediatized, field of international relations: namely, competitive sport. So,
to take only the most recent and obvious example, the conspicuous success
of the French association football team, world champions in 1998 and Euro-
pean champions in 2000 – an unprecedented double – has been achieved
against the background of a historically weak domestic league, with virtually
all members of the current squad based not in France, but rather in Italy,
Spain, Germany, or Great Britain. The mediatic representation and political
recuperation of this ‘multicultural’ national side’s achievements are them-
selves part of a narrative of state-sponsored investment, both moral and
material, in competitive sport that, for all its modern glamour and glitz, has
its roots in the dark years of the Second World War, and even the Franco-
Prussian war of 1870.2 In Olympic sports, which have been systematically
encouraged by French governments since General Charles de Gaulle’s
outraged reaction to the poor national performance at Rome in 1960, France
has had an outstanding record in recent years, finishing fifth overall at Atlanta
–1–