Luke Rooney, Jerry Collins, Andrew Mehrtens, Anton Oliver, Matt Hanjak, David Vaealiki, Tana Umaga, Mark Gasnier, SonnyBill Williams, Craig Gower, Dan Carter, George Gregan, John Connolly and Ewen McKenzie are just some of the Antipodean players and coaches who have made or are making their way to French rugby.
And who can blame them. The South of France offers a work and lifestyle package that the rugby codes in Australia and New Zealand simply cannot match.
Fast, furious, famously savage and now very wealthy French rugby is renowned for its unique blend of brawn and beauty. The guardian of that institution the Federation Francaise de Rugby ( FFR ) boasts a rich and mainly glorious past, a past of which French rugby supporters are proud.
But as a book by Englishman Mike Rylance, The Forbidden Game reveals, there exists events of which the FFR can feel decidedly less proud. For all the exuberance of its present, French rugby’s reputation is dogged by an inglorious past.
French rugby is about panache and flair, prodigious feats of running and handling, astounding sporting exploits followed by equally surprising collapses. There is however a less wholesome story concealed beneath the scrums and mauls of French rugby history. It is a story that suggests were it not for the Second World War and an act of conspiracy with the collaborationist Vichy regime rugby in France today might be just a minor sport.
Introduced in Paris in 1873 it was quickly seized upon by the French aristocracy as a way of stiffening the backs of the officer-class following the humiliation of defeat in the Franco-Prussian war. Yet ultimately it only flourished in the South and South-West becoming hugely popular as a form of regional nationalism and pride and as an expression of resistance to Paris. It inevitably became a way of channelling centuries’ old feuds between the various villages and towns and by the 1920s had become a game administered at national level by toffs in Paris but played by peasants in the South-West. The toffs soon lost control.
The rural players enthusiastically adopted the flamboyant, running style developed in Paris but not the notion of sport for sport’s sake. According to the rural tradition the proper object of rugby was to rub the nose of the next village, literally in the dirt. Thus financial inducements, transfer fees and violence became widespread. There were occasional reports at the time of referees being beaten up. The violence spilled over to the internationals against England and Wales and coupled with the almost rampant professionalism France in 1931 was ejected from the Five Nations. Rugby as an organized sport seemed in danger of disintegrating. At that moment a far more serious threat arrived in the form of rugby league.
Rugby league was brought to France by Jean Galia a second row forward, boxing champion and alleged secret professional. The FFR banned him, on flimsy evidence in 1932 more in an effort to prove to the English that they were cleaning up their “shamateurism”. The players and fans of the South-West took enthusiastically to the new game whose open running pattern of play with less scrums and no rucks was ideally suited to the swashbuckling French style. By the 1934-35 season there were 14 teams in the semi-professional rugby league competition. In 1939 three leading union clubs, Narbonne, Carcassonne and Brive switched codes. It seemed that league would become the dominant code of rugby in France. But fate and a shabby trick were about to intervene.
With the defeat of France by Nazi Germany in May 1940 the fortunes of French rugby league went into reverse. In August only six weeks after the Vichy regime had been installed in central and southern France, its sports minister Jean Ybarngaray announced “The fate of rugby league is clear. Its life is over and it will be quite simply deleted from French sport.” Four months later in December Marshal Philippe Petain, head of the Vichy government signed a decree ordering rugby league to merge with union. Vichy officials promised that league could continue at amateur level but the merger and promise were false. The assets of league clubs were seized and given to union clubs. Officially this was all part of a drive by the Vichy regime to reinvigorate French moral values and end professionalism in sport.
A report was written for Vichy on the state of rugby in France within weeks of the German victory. It said that rugby league because it was professional and therefore contrary to proper sporting values, had contributed to the lack of moral education that allowed the German armies to sweep French troops aside. The report was complied by Dr Paul Voivenel honorary president of the FFR who was a close associate of senior figures in the Vichy regime. One such figure was Colonel Joseph Pascot who was director of sports in the Vichy Sports Ministry and who had played in the French rugby team in the 1920s. According to Rylance the real drive to kill off rugby league came from senior officials within the FFR who cynically used the cover of military defeat and alleged national renewal to achieve their goal.
This was also the finding in 2002 of a French government inquiry into sport during the Vichy period. The report concluded: “The action against rugby league was the result of steps taken by the French rugby union federation which saw an opportunity to get rid of a dangerous rival”. Jealousy, prejudice and underhanded tricks had won the day.
The French rugby league clubs were never compensated and rugby league never recovered in terms of public recognition in France. Rugby became the overwhelmingly dominant code, an extremely wealthy game and of course fully professional. But for chance the story might have been very different.
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