Just before its Top 14 match against Bordeaux-Bègles this Sunday evening at Paris La Défense Arena, Racing 92 communicated a sad news: the death, at 89, of one of its most glorious representatives, François Moncla.
Third line wing of the years 1950-1960, the Béarnais, born in Louvie-Juzon (Pyrénées-Atlantiques) at the foot of the mountains, has worn the jersey of the France team thirty-one times, including eighteen as captain.
“We have lost a rock, a peak, a mountain, reacted the president of the Ile-de-France club Jacky Lorenzetti.
He was a great player and above all a remarkable man.
We are orphans from part of our past.
We had had some news lately, it was nothing special.
It is the wear and tear of time.
"
It is with great sadness that we have just learned of the death of François Moncla in his 89th year.
It is a great figure of our Club who is leaving.
A leader, our Captain.
Today we are losing a legend, we are thinking of his family and friends.
pic.twitter.com/avgkKgrBlD
- Racing 92 (@ racing92) November 28, 2021
Leaving his dear Ossau valley where this blacksmith's grandson had cut his teeth as a rugby player, François Moncla went to Paris at 17 to look for work.
He had found some when he joined EDF.
He then endorsed the sky and white colors of Racing with which he had become champion of France in 1959.
A landmark year for him and for rugby fans.
He had thus led the XV of France to his first success in the Tournament of the Five Nations and he had entered the legend on this occasion by kicking the buttocks of an English pillar constantly offside, making Twickenham stadium roar.
He also won the next two editions (1960, 1961) with the Blues.
Politically engaged on the left
Back in Pau, he won a new Brennus shield in 1964, with the Section he then chaired from 1979 to 1985. “When I went down to the South-West, I often went to see him in Pau,” says Lorenzetti.
We didn't have the same ideas but we liked to chat.
He was a man of convictions who sought to convince.
"
Politically committed to the left, assiduous reader of L'Humanité, François Moncla had spent his entire professional life at EDF campaigning for the CGT and the Communist Party.
"After all that I have lived, I believe in the solidarity of men, to help each other to access a better life", he declared at 82, while he was on a list of the Front left during the municipal elections of 2014 in Pau, where he died this Sunday.