French World Cup team finds strength in diversity

You won’t find Trappes or Sarcelles in any Parisian travel guide. These two suburbs of the French capital, Trappes to the south and Sarcelles to the north, are notorious among Parisians for recent civil unrest.

In 2013 a riot erupted in Trappes after police arrested a man who had tried to prevent them checking the identity of his veiled wife. Last year in Sarcelles, a 500-strong mob destroyed several Jewish shops when a pro-Palestinian rally turned violent.

Yet neither suburb deserves its reputation as a Gallic Dodge City and they will have much feel proud about when France take to the field for their opening World Cup match against Italy this evening. The starting loosehead prop Eddy Ben Arous was born in Trappes, while tighthead Rabah Slimani is a son of Sarcelles.

Changed times

How times have changed. The two props who played for France in the 1987 World Cup final, Pascal Ondarts and Jean- Pierre Garuet-Lempirou, were men of the deep southwest, born and bred on the edge of the Hautes-Pyrenees. Most of the French squad in the inaugural World Cup had similar roots.

Diversity runs through the 2015 France squad. Not only are there three South Africans among the 31 players, there is also a New Zealand-born Samoan (Uini Atonio) and a Belgian (Vincent Debaty). Captain Thierry Dusautoir was born in the Ivory Coast, while his fellow flankers Fulgence Ouedraogo and Yannick Nyanga hail from Burkina Faso and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The trio arrived in France as boys and learned the game at clubs in the south, the traditional heartland of French rugby.

It wasn't so easy for Ben Arous and Slimani, nor for Mathieu Bastareaud and Wesley Fofana, fellow Parisians from ethnic minorities. Bastareaud, who will also start in the centre at Twickenham against Italy, was "discovered" by Alain Gazon, now the director of Racing 92's rugby school, but for more than 20 years a tireless physical education teacher in the Paris suburb of Massy.

“Massy has a population of about 40,000 and around 30 per cent is of immigrant origin,” says Gazon. “There are Malians, Ivorians, Algerians, Moroccans and Tunisians and, initially, it was a challenge to convince their parents to let their children play rugby because they knew nothing about the sport or its culture.”

Gazon’s objective was to get the kids off the streets and on the pitch. “Gradually I won the parents’ trust and, backed by the local council, we began to get more of the kids from the estates playing rugby.”

Gazon's first major success was winger Jimmy Marlu, who was signed from Massy by Clermont in 1996 and was in the World Cup squad in 1999. But it took the 2007 World Cup to radically transform rugby's image of rugby in France.

Mainstream

“In the last 10 years rugby has undergone what we call in France a huge ‘mediatisation’,” explains Jean-Paul Dispans, manager of Stade Francais’s rugby school. “Professionalism has obviously played its part, but France’s hosting of the 2007 World Cup was very important because, for the first time, rugby became mainstream in the media . . . people across France, not just from ethnic minorities, saw that it was a sport for everyone.”

The year before France hosted the World Cup, Dispans had welcomed to the club a shy, slightly overweight 16- year- old from Sarcelles. “Rabah Slimani was a number eight when he arrived but I quickly saw he was best suited to the frontrow,” recalls Dispans.

“What stood out about Rabah, other than his physique, was his work ethic. He was focused, determined and willing to work hard at improving his game.”

One of Stade's summer signings was 20- year- old Sekou Macalou, the France under-20 flanker regarded as an outstanding young talent.

Like Slimani, Macalou began his career at Sarcelles, then played a couple of seasons for Massy in ProD2 [France’s second division] before signing a three-year deal with Stade Francais. One of Macalou’s former teammates at Sarcelles, Judicaël Cancoriet, has just signed a similar contract with Clermont.

The driving force behind Sarcelles is Bruno Balluais, president of the club for 20 years. Sarcelles hosts an annual summer rugby tournament in conjunction with local schools, the most recent of which involved 1,400 children.

What the likes of Dispans, Balluais and Gazon are doing is making rugby not just accessible to France’s ethnic minorities, but aspirational. “The presence of Bastareaud, Wesley and the others is very important to the kids from the estates,” says Gazon.

“They see what’s possible.”

For France, too, unexpected finalists from 2011, anything is possible at a World Cup.

Guardian Service