In rugby, we shoot each other as a family.
Not really with mufflers, but more in the burst style of a machine gun.
A real thriller, stuffed with power games and purses to defend.
Too bad the dialogues were not written by Michel Audiard.
We would have laughed, at least.
Not here.
The film noir that stretches before our eyes turns into a rat race, into cacophony.
It is moreover more of a soap opera, always tarnishing a little more the already tarnished image of a sport which no longer seems to know where it lives.
Its chefs crimp their buns, as in the days of overcoats and big cigars.
On the one hand, Bernard Laporte, president of the recently re-elected French Rugby Federation (FFR), who would like to reign over the entire domain.
On the other, Paul Goze, the president of the National Rugby League (LNR), who tries to exist and relays the word of the bosses of the Top 14 clubs, furious at being so little considered.
This Wednesday, October 14, this is the last explanation between them.
"Do we need such a match?"
Let's summarize the previous episodes: the Blues, who compete in November and the first weekend of December in the Autumn Nations Cup (competition which replaces the European tour of the nations of the South, forced to stay at home due to the Covid pandemic- 19), are also scheduled to play their final match of the 2020 Six Nations Tournament against Ireland on October 31.
That is to say five matches, to which the FFR, under the aegis of World Rugby, the international federation, has decided to add a preparation match against Wales, this Saturday, October 24, at the Stade de France.
The heart of the matter.
All the Presidents of the Top 14, except that of Montpellier, Mohed Altrad, also sponsor of the XV of France, refuse in fact to release their players for this match.
While the agreement signed between the Federation and the League is only valid for three meetings in November, they have agreed to go up to five.
No more.
They say they are strangled by the crisis.
“Do we need such a match?
asks Didier Lacroix, the Toulouse president.
Each time the French team plays the Tournament, as a rule, there is no preparation meeting.
"
The sacrosanct values of rugby buried
Bernard Lemaître, his counterpart from Toulon, going so far as to consider that Charles Ollivon, the captain of the Blues, is absent against the Welsh;
Bernard Laporte, who evokes the importance of TV rights, threatening reprisals against clubs and players who do not comply with the federal will… The tone has been raised.
On both sides, lawyers have delved into the texts.
The Council of State, for its part, deemed itself incompetent in the circumstances and referred all these little people to negotiations.
Hence this last chance meeting.
One of the two camps will have to give in.
But the damage is done.
The war between the two institutions broke out in broad daylight, the opposing interests of each other too, and the sacrosanct values of rugby, if they really existed one day, have indeed been shattered.