Le Coq

Prologue

In 2021, amid the Covid pandemic that had engulfed the world, a rugby match was played in France deep in the heart of the Basque country. Biarritz and Bayonne had long been rivals, the two pre-eminent clubs of the entire Pays Basque region since the diminishing of Saint-Jean-de-Luz as a playing power.

But this was no ordinary game, early as it was in the opening up of French sport to spectators after the long nights of self-isolation caused by the disease. Bayonne, clinging on to their prized Top 14 place all season, had to beat their fierce local rivals in the play-off to remain in the top flight. Biarritz, five-time champions of France and European Cup runners-up in 2006 and 2010, needed victory to return to the top level for the first time since 2014.

Given that this would be a match attended by spectators for the first time, just twenty-four days after the government announced a partial lifting of the restrictions that had closed stadium grounds, this was a delicate, significant occasion. Discussions with the authorities concluded with agreement that 5000 would be the maximum number permitted inside Biarritz's Stade Aguilera; 2500 tickets for the home club, 1500 for Bayonne with 1000 for assorted others.

Long before a ball was kicked on a hot, sunny and increasingly dramatic afternoon, it was obvious that the authorities, in attempting to keep a lid on Basque passion for rugby, had filled a large bottle with nitroglycerine and then given it a good shake.

Within fifteen or twenty minutes of the start, even those without tickets outside the ground had found the stadium's defences porous. So, in they poured. There are 9500 seats in the Stade Aguilera; 4950 in the Kampf stand, 4500 in the Blanco stand. The total capacity is 13,400.

For the play-off, not a spare seat was to be found. Add on another 4000 or so just milling around and finding whatever vantage point they could, and you had a crowd of about 13,000.

The local prefect, party to the agreement that no more than 5000 should attend, watched this invasion of the hordes with increasing dismay. A nervous club official offered a hurried explanation.

'It would appear,' he said with an air of solemnity, 'we have had a problem with the automatic ticketing system.'

Only problem was, Biarritz did not possess an automatic ticketing system.

The prefect, his face darkening by the moment, stood up theatrically at half-time and announced, 'I have been deceived.' At which point, he left the ground.

Alas, it got worse. Much worse.

A match wracked with tension throughout finished level at full time with the score 3-all. Then, an extra twenty minutes were played. At the end of which it was 6-6. Amid fever-pitch excitement, a hasty conflab ensued. A penalty-kick competition then began with the first ten kicks, five each side, successful from the 22-metre line in front of the posts. People were beside themselves with passion and tension, sharing bottles of champagne and wine, kissing each other, singing and waving their flags. Some just couldn't look, others were already crying. This outpouring of emotion spoke of the Basques' undiluted love for this game.

Alas for poor Bayonne, their sixth attempt failed. Up stepped an Englishman, Biarritz's Steffon Armitage, to land the kick that sent his club back to the Top 14 after eight years. Mayhem ensued.

Firecrackers exploded, smoke beacons lit, more bottles of champagne and wine plus cans of lager were opened and shared around. Thousands invaded the field. The Biarritz players were hugged and hoisted shoulder-high; their fans danced deliriously with delight. Not a soul gave a thought to social distancing, that novel phrase of those times, nor indeed even the wearing of a mask. Health considerations had vanished.

Nor did anyone imagine that just twelve months later, in June 2022, the roles would be reversed. Biarritz would tumble back down to Pro D2 league, a final day 80-7 thrashing at Toulouse confirming their inadequacy for the Top 14. But who should be sailing past them in the other direction at the end of the 2021/22 season? Bayonne, after hammering their rivals Mont-de-Marsan 49-20 in the play-offs. How times change.

Twelve months earlier, the authorities had spoken furiously of sanctions in the light of events at the Biarritz ground. But this surely was just another example of French flouting of laws and rules, allied to an intense passion for the sport.

Unbelievably, it got worse that night. A strict French government Covid curfew had been in place from December 2020. In June 2021, it had been stretched to 11 p.m., but it still applied throughout France. I happened to be at dinner at a small, delightful restaurant near the centre of Biarritz, and glanced at my watch. It was 10.30.

'I suppose then we'd better head back to the hotel,' I suggested to my French travelling companion. He looked bemused, as if I had ordered a bottle of English beer with the Chateaubriand. 'A curfew? In this town tonight? There isn't a policeman in the whole Pays Basque who would dare enforce a curfew tonight.'

The author can vouch for the veracity of that statement. Closer to half past one in the morning, with supporters still streaming through the town and drinking at the bars that remained open, there wasn't a single policeman in sight. Curfews might be for some but not Biarritz on the night of their promotion. The French make their own rules in such circumstances.

As French rugby legend Serge Blanco, a Biarritz man all his career, said afterwards, 'We beat Bayonne, a Basque match. It was fantastic, like we had won the World Championship.'

And speaking personally, it was fantastic to be back in the heartland of French rugby. That always induced a frisson of pleasure. Not to say excitement. Past games re-entered the mind, the soul and spirit lifted by thoughts of great rugby men encountered. On and off the field.

For me, it has been so throughout my life. I first went to Paris to see an international match in 1970 at Stade Colombes. But four years earlier, I had stood on the terraces at the old Cardiff Arms Park to witness the flair and innovation of a French team that included both Boniface brothers, Michel Crauste, Walter Spanghero, Jean Gachassin, Christian Darrouy and Lilian Camberabero. Among others!

I first encountered a French Rugby Championship final in 1973, Dax v Tarbes. The drama, colour and excitement made it like watching the game on another planet compared to the sober, sane games played at that time in English club rugby.

Just 22 miles separates England from France. But in almost every way, it could be tens of thousands of miles. Everything is different. Language, philosophy, mentality, cuisine, customs and attitude towards sport. Especially rugby...

* * *

Pierre-Auguste Renoir could paint an alluring scene of such beauty, viewers sometimes sat entranced for long periods, studying a single work.

Then there was Claude Debussy, who penned a musical line of such serenity that even fighting cats might stop and listen. As for Sacha Distel, well, let's just say he could croon with the best of them.

Each Frenchman illuminated his own genre, contributing richly to his nation's culture.

Others in myriad fields offered their own talents. Take the men of French rugby. With a glorious enthusiasm for the game and an often total disregard for its rules, skilful Gallic rugby men down the years have ensured that rugby has become as embedded in the French psyche as a plump clove of garlic. The game has contributed richly to French culture.

For rugby was, and remains, an endemic part of French life. Mind you, complex would be a wholly inadequate way of describing this association, this love affair with a game.

As someone once wrote, 'If you want to interest a Frenchman in a game, you tell him it's a war. But if you want to interest an Englishman in a war, you tell him it's a game.'

A game for gentlemen? Tell that to the victims of French brutality on the rugby field, those searching a muddied field in the after-match gloaming for a couple of uprooted teeth, lost amid the more fractious moments of a so-called game. Try telling that to the family of the now deceased Racing Club forward Armand Clerc, blinded in an eye for the remainder of his life by a punch thrown into his defenceless face amid the hurly burly of a line-out.

Then there were the fist fights where grown men squabbled like territorial geese.

Of course, you would never find such acts mentioned in rugby's rule book. But that was the key in understanding why France fell so passionately in love with a game introduced to them by the English. The obvious capacity to evade or simply ignore most of the rules struck a warming chord with the French mentality. It chimed with an inherent French trait.

In 2022, it was the 150th anniversary of the first rugby club establishing firm roots on French soil. The club, at Le Havre on the French north coast, was founded mostly by students living and working in the Channel port from Oxford and Cambridge universities.

With precision timing, the French national team marked the occasion by winning a rare Six Nations Championship Grand Slam, their first for twelve years. But what was of far greater significance was that it was achieved with a perfect mixture of traditional French style allied to the demands of the modern game: discipline, defensive security and concentration, plus kicking for strategic benefit. They were patient, too. In both attack and defence. So unlike the...