The Webb-Ellis grave is a place of pilgrimage, festooned with plaques
This happened during the war. Throughout the Thirties, rugby league had
supplanted union on the French sporting scene. French union’s tendency to
extreme violence, and evident shamateurism, led to the game’s being banished
from international competition. The sport declined, and rugby league –
professional in England for decades – stepped into the breach. Players
embraced the sport they called rugby-Ã -XIII, not least because it allowed
them to be paid openly. Villeneuve-sur-Lot boasted France’s first rugby
league club, and remains as besotted with the 13-man game as it is with its
region’s more famous prunes. It is one of the rare towns in France where one
may still have a proper conversation about Wigan or St Helens. (Head for Le
Globe brasserie on Blvd Georges Leygues.)
As union struggled, so professional rugby league took off big-time, generating
crowds and cash, and annoying the hell out of unionists. Then came the war,
defeat by Germany and the scandal.
The new Vichy sports minister, Jean Borotra (yes, that Borotra, the Twenties
Wimbledon tennis champ) surrounded himself with rugby union elements. They
didn’t hesitate to use their influence to get even with their rivals. With a
stroke of Borotra’s pen, they had rugby league outlawed. Just like that. A
whole sport… pfft. All league’s assets – grounds, buildings, cash – were
seized. Funnily enough, much of this property ended up in union hands. The
relish with which rugby unionists savoured their victory suggested that a
military thrashing by Germany might have been a reasonable price to pay for
kicking rugby league in the head. Decades later, L’Equipe, the sporting
newspaper, characterised this as the most shameful episode in 20th-century
French sport.
Post-war, rugby league returned, but never recovered its assets. It
nevertheless boomed through the Fifties, not least thanks to Pipette
Puig-Aubert. Fullback and goal-kicker for Carcassonne XIII and the French
national team, Puig-Aubert was one of France’s greatest-ever footballers,
all codes considered. His was the key presence in France’s outstanding 1951
rugby league tour of Australia – sustained by an iron personal discipline
described thus by an Australian journalist: “(Puig-Aubert) smokes like a
bushfire, drinks everything to hand and is horrified by training.†Quite
understandably, he knocked up a record amount of points and became renowned
down under. France won the Test series.
I met him in 1993, a few months before his death at 69. The forgotten fellow
shuffling into a Carcassonne café remained a giant in Australia. “Whenever I
go there, I can never pay taxi drivers or hotels. They won’t let me. Once
upon a time, they offered me a lot to play over there, but they took life
very seriously. They preferred training to smoking.†When you’re next in
Carcassonne, nip to the Stade Albert Domec. There’s a statue of the great
man outside.
Rugby league prospered through the Sixties and Seventies, then dipped –
managerial and financial problems, the usual – leaving union in the
ascendance. But it’s bouncing back in some spots. The Catalan Dragons, from
Perpignan, hold their own in the otherwise all-English Super League. They’re
at home to Leeds Rhinos on February 28. And Villeneuve are doing OK in
France’s Elite pool system. They’re at home to Baho on March 9. Do go, if
you’re in the vicinity. You’ll learn more, and have a jollier time, than in
any local museum.
They love their lemons in Menton
“Fine,†said the woman of the St Helens couple, as we tracked back through the
narrow streets. “But we’re in Menton. I hear there’s a lemon festival here.â€
“And so there is,†I said. “Lemons, limes and oranges. It’s terrifically
colourful. Starts in February.†For readers, that means it’s on now. It
continues until March 5. I perhaps should have mentioned this earlier.
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Article source: http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/rugby/ucd-offers-60-point-top-up-to-attract-elite-athletes-1.1663571
Rugby in France: in league against the unionists
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