During a match with his high school in Tarbes, Mathias was the victim of an accident linked to a tackle which made him quadriplegic.
Following this dramatic incident on December 14, Olivier Girault, national director of the National Union of School Sport (UNSS), had decided to "suspend from this day and until further notice, the practice of rugby under all its forms" within the framework of school meetings.
A decision that fell on Friday, December 16, on the eve of the school holidays, which was deemed "incomprehensible" by the Snep-FSU, a union of EPS teachers.
"An accident, however dramatic it may be, and far from us to minimize it, cannot lead to the exclusion of a sporting activity in such a rush when an investigation is probably just beginning to be carried out and the National Joint Commission (CMN ) has not yet met,” he explained in a letter addressed to the director of the UNSS and made public via his website.
Rugby: a quadriplegic teenager after a serious accident in the UNSS, school matches suspended
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Olivier Girault then told us that he would make a decision regarding the date of resumption of rugby in the UNSS “very quickly”.
This was done on the occasion of the National Mixed Rugby Commissions, held this Friday.
The UNSS-FFR and the UNSS-FFR XIII have decided to resume the practice of rugby at 5 (without tackle) and that of rugby at XIII as well.
With regard to other forms of rugby, the press release stipulates that “additional measures likely to optimize the preservation of the physical integrity of the licensees are studied before any date of effective resumption”.