First thing after the Christmas break we play our return match against Castres. I am injured again. If you are starting to worry about the fragile physique of the author, you're not alone. I hope you won't consider it giving the game away if I tell you that I do get to start a few more games during the season.
This time around I watch the game on television. By the time I switch it on, five minutes after kick-off, we are already seven points down. Uh-oh. Then Lolo Arbo burgles an interception: 7–7.
Our scrum starts to dominate in Meeuws' absence—even ex-All Black props get injured—and Coco kicks a couple of penalties: 7–13. Castres score again, but we are still in it at 14–13, driving a line-out into the in-goal, for what must surely be a try. But Dio, our hooker, seems to put the ball down on someone's foot, not grounding it properly, and then it spills forward, and the referee gives them the scrum. Castres recover while we go to sleep for 20 minutes, letting three tries in and effectively losing the game.
When the half-time whistle blows it is 35–16, we are a man down after Jérôme Vallée has been yellow-carded, and any chance of a win has vanished. In the second half the game loses its structure, as often happens when the result is a foregone conclusion. Castres, having already scored four tries, have pocketed the bonus point for attack and are now just going through the motions. Another interception, this time from Seb Logerot, and then a well-constructed second try for Arbo mean that, with 20 minutes to go, we too can start to think of a bonus point. But a quarter of an hour from the end our tighthead prop, Antony Vigna, collects a red card for a wild swing of a punch that doesn't even connect but is right in front of the referee, and at 14 against 15 we just don't have the fire-power.
Antony is, in one sense, a prop of the old, old school. If Gorgodzilla looks like a grizzly bear, Antony is more like Big Ted, a roly-poly type who has made no concession to weight-training programs or dietician's directives over the course of his career. He is a good friend of mine, and his dedication to foie gras, cheese and extra helpings of all the good things French cuisine has to offer, combined with an enduring obsession with progressive rock from the 1970s and internet-based role-playing games, make him a particularly endearing character. Even if he is, by some distance, the least athletic person in the team (for which I am grateful, because otherwise I am the backmarker), he is a very effective player, who uses his bulk intelligently. All the shortcuts—or, as an old coach of mine used to say, 'the fat man's tracks'– are well-trodden paths to him, and the dark arts of the front row are an open book. However, he is not usually given to punching people without reason.
Antony's action is a sign of our collective frustration that we should have let slip a winnable game so badly that it became a 54–28 hiding, coupled with the fact that he got clattered high and from the side while standing quietly on the side of a ruck minding his own business. Still, we try to accentuate the positive. It was, after all, an away game against a good side, and 20 minutes of good rugby is better than none at all.
The home and away thing is, of course, not the only surprise for foreigners new to France and its rugby. One of the first things that struck me was the food. This, after all, is France, so food is important. For my first game at Racing Club we met four hours before kick-off to eat a three-course meal together, followed by coffee. I enjoy eating, was brought up to eat everything on the plate, and the food wasn't bad, so I tucked in and finished whatever was put in front of me. I may even have asked for seconds. It was only later, as we made our way out to the ground, that I realised that my digestion was never going to have time to cope with all that food between now and when we started the warm-up.
Adrenalin does funny things to the body, and I have played enough rugby that I need only walk into a changing-room, smell the liniment, and hear the sound of steel sprigs on concrete floors, and a Pavlovian response kicks me into so-called 'fight or flight' mode, even if I'm not playing. Adrenalin shuts down your stomach and sends all the blood to your muscles and brain, which is ordinarily quite a useful thing, but not when you have just got through three courses with all the trimmings and coffee, and are starting to wonder whether you will shortly become reacquainted with the chicken and pasta you thought you'd seen the last of an hour ago.
I don't know how everyone else coped. Maybe they were used to it, or maybe they hadn't made such pigs of themselves as I had. In any case, my French wasn't up to discussing the problem and I had to start worrying about the game. My alimentary canal, though, wasn't going to be ignored, and as we started going through the drills there was a succession of perps, parps and hoots that would have put an oompah band to shame. Contrary to belief, the French enjoy toilet humour at least as much as the English, so if there was no sympathy I had at least made some of them laugh. By half-time everything had calmed down, but it was not a performance I would want repeated.
The other thing about pre-match food is that the menu is always the same. Always. That was my first taste of ham and crudités, followed by chicken and pasta, topped off with yoghurt or fromage blanc, and if I'd known it was going to be the same meal before every game for the next nine years I might have held off.
The quality of chicken and pasta varies, of course, depending on where you are. Italy is at the top of the table. Some parts of France are better than others—there is a little place just outside Castres where the chicken is always roasted with thyme and lemon juice—but the food is generally trustworthy.
England and Ireland, too, are all right. In fact, England was the one place where the infernal cycle of chicken and pasta was broken for me: once, in Gloucester in November 2002 (trust me, you remember these things), for some inexplicable reason we broke with tradition and had bacon and eggs as brunch before an early game.
Scotland and Wales, on the other hand, are infamous among French rugby players for being gastronomic hellholes. Admittedly, sampling has not been exhaustive, but the chicken always seems to be boiled an unearthly pink and borderline unidentifiable, and while pasta is not an easy dish to cock up, they seem to manage it.
'You are what you eat' is an old saw, and as professional sportsmen we are often reminded of the importance of diet. Most clubs have dieticians who intervene on a regular basis, and Montpellier is no exception. Over the years we have all heard the speech about complex carbohydrates, and branch amino acids, and fruit and vegetables, and no alcohol and certainly no tobacco. Everyone nods piously and asks a couple of token questions, but the reality is that the message falls on stony ground, in France anyway. In every club in which I have played at least a third of the squad are regular smokers and pretty much everyone boozes, although not to Anglo-Saxon proportions. Everyone eats pasta, even though, as All Black legend Colin Meads recently pointed out, if pasta is so good for rugby players, why aren't the Italians world champions?
Just recently our dietician tried to get across the message that, physiologically speaking, we should be eating big meals at lunch but lighter dinners. Laurent Arbo made the comment afterwards that this was a message that would be hard to get across, given the social importance of a good meal and everything that goes with it at the end of the day. As he said this, he was miming popping the cork on the evening bottle. So there is still work to be done.
Another thing for which France is justly famous, but perhaps less proud of, is its bureaucracy. The state seems to be everywhere, and for anything to be done all sorts of mind-numbing forms have to be signed in triplicate, and various pre-conditions satisfied. The trick is to get someone who knows how the system works—or, better still, the people who run the system, as I saw early on with Racing Club. My new coach, who had used a translator for contract negotiations, picked me up when I arrived, and predictably proved to speak excellent English. The 'je ne parle pas anglais but if I have to I know a few words' line wasn't the only French cliché that went according to type. We dropped my gear at a hotel and then went to the offices of the Fédération de Rugby to start sorting out my licence. I was arriving in mid-season, after the cut-off date for signing new players, but he didn't seem fazed by this. Brandishing a box of chocolates for the secretary who would be looking after my dossier, he said, 'Here in France we know the rules, we understand the rules, but'—with a Gallic shrug—'we break the rules.'
Unfortunately, this kind of efficiency wasn't shared by everyone at Racing and I spent the whole of my first year without a work permit—not because I couldn't get one, but because I had been reassured that I didn't need one.
Perpignan, my next club, was the same happy mix of annoying formalities and well-intentioned corruption. Shortly after getting a car from the club I picked up a parking ticket, and knowing by then how things worked I decided to mention this to one of the helpful club officials. He was embarrassed by my question (I suppose I was hinting that I wanted something done about it), not because I was implying that he might be able to help me with something dishonest, but because it seemed to him to be so self-evident that parking tickets should not be paid off but dealt with through the proper channels—that is, by someone who knew the right person to talk to. He was genuinely put out by the fact that, as he explained, he wasn't able to help because his usual contact had recently quit and the new guy was less helpful. The new man was from somewhere else, and didn't understand the way things worked.
In February, the week before our return game against Bourgoin, I have another close-up view of the bloodthirsty nature of French rugby players and decide not to get involved. Coming back from injury (still) I have to tog out with the Bs. The captain is our young hooker, David, who is 21 and a fiery little bastard hell-bent on proving himself. He's not a bad player, but today his tactical decision-making leaves a lot to be desired. I make a quick calculation and realise that I was playing for the Wanganui Under-14 rep side around the time he was born, and can't decide whether I find this amusing or terrifying.
I am playing alongside Drickus Hancke, the new lock recently arrived from South Africa and ex-captain of Eastern Province, who is also feeling frustrated. As we roll up to another line-out and David makes another debatable call, I hear Drickus mutter under his breath, 'That's right buddy, throw the dice.' I keep trying to make helpful suggestions based on the wisdom of my considerable age, but keep being told, 'Non, ce sont les consignes' ('It's the game plan').
This does little to improve my mood. We are playing against the second team from Auch on a Sunday, and it's been a long week. Training with the Espoirs on Wednesday is a grim affair well out of town on a dodgy potholed pitch, and culminates in a game situation against les Reichels (the Under 21s). If the Espoirs are, as they are sometimes described, a swarm of Killer Bs when playing against the first team, the Under 21s are like a school of piranhas against the Espoirs: if you look at them individually they are not particularly intimidating, but as soon as you have the ball in your hands you have about six of them gnawing at your leg. And there seem to be about fifty on the pitch.
Anyway, this particular Sunday afternoon we are beating Auch (whose first team is in the second division) but there is nothing very impressive about the way we are doing it. We are under pressure in the scrum but nothing serious. We are comfortably clearing the ball, but David is unhappy because the props are boring on him and he makes the executive decision that I should relever la prochaine mêlée ('lift up the next scrum')—that is, drop my binding and reach through and punch one of their front-rowers.
I have done this a couple of times, but only on special occasions when we are really getting pasted. I am not about to do it in a Sunday afternoon B game that we will win at a canter, just because someone's pride is being dented. I don't want anyone to get hurt—least of all me, particularly as it would be well-deserved: no one takes kindly to getting popped in a scrum while they are defenceless, and there's a good chance that it would kick off a bagarre générale.
All-in brawls are much more fun to watch than to participate in. What I try to do in these situations is keep my back to our side and make sure I don't get outflanked by anyone. The sneaky prick who blindsides you tends to do much more damage than anyone fighting face-on, and my reach tends to make sure no one gets close enough from in front to land one. Wading valiantly into the fray like some latter-day knight in search of honour, glory and justice for all may seem like a good idea when the adrenalin is pumping and the blood starts singing in your ears, but really it's a mug's game. In the unlikely event that you connect with your target you will probably get a red card, but there's more chance of getting clubbed yourself, particularly if you're on your own—and you probably will be. The best you can reasonably hope for is to flail away for a bit, firing warning shots across people's bows, and taking a couple of light grazes that will show up well at the after-match to remind everyone that you don't mind getting stuck in. This strikes me as not much of a reward for a hell of an effort and considerable exposure to danger.
If you're really getting pummelled, grab the guy nearest you and pull his head as close to yours as possible, while holding on to him so he can't head-butt you, and snarl something suitably belligerent that will make him think twice without encouraging him to go berserk. (Suggestions of cuckoldry are best avoided in France, being the one insult guaranteed to goad the target into a blind rage.) That way he can't hit you, and his mates are unlikely to try because they may miss you and hit him, and with any luck it will all be over quickly.
Whatever you do, don't go down. Kicking people in the head is an absolute disgrace and contrary to all the unwritten rules, but you never know just how crazed some of the opposition may be. Sometimes your team-mates can be just as scary. I have a lasting memory of a générale in Perpignan, when we were playing against Bourgoin, and one or two faces on our side with big grins obviously revelling as boots went flying in, and Sebastian Chabal racing in to swallow dive into the middle of the fracas.
While everyone probably prefers to play in games that don't descend into brawls, it is difficult not to be nostalgic about the brawls after the fact. Generally people are no more seriously hurt than they are while playing the game normally, and you can have a beer afterwards and talk up your own performance outrageously with your mates. Some people will think that sounds mad, but most people who have played rugby in France will understand.
Soon after I arrived in France I was genuinely moved by something that happened to me in what could have been a very ugly situation. Racing Club were playing in Montpellier in a cup game. I tackled a guy who was running straight at me across the chest with my shoulder—the sort of thing that had happened a lot in New Zealand and that I considered perfectly legal. However, I timed it particularly sweetly so his feet went flying out from under him and he spilled the ball forward and landed flat on his back with a satisfying grunt, and my tackle may have looked a bit high.
I fell next to him and was surprised to have one of our players jump on me almost immediately. I understood when I felt a hail of kicks thud into his body—he was covering my head with his torso because he had seen a horde of nutters descending on me. He must have taken five or six solid blows to the back, but he just got up and said, 'Ca va, mon ami?' As I dusted myself off I saw it was our hooker, Carlos Martos. I haven't seen Carlos for nearly ten years now but I would happily buy him a beer any time he likes. Without getting too bleary-eyed, I find it beautiful that someone, particularly someone I didn't know well, would do some thing so selfless for me. (Footnote: The referee, after roundly remonstrating with everyone involved, penalised me.)
The return match against Bourgoin turns out to be one of our better games. My miserable outing with the Espoirs is not enough to get me back into the team, so again I am watching from the sidelines. Bourgoin score one beautifully worked try from a set piece, but they are without Benjamin Boyet, their linchpin at fly-half, and Papé seems below his best before going off, and by squeezing them in scrums and line-outs we prevent them building anything. With half an hour to go, it's still close at 23–20, but a converted try and a penalty allow us to pull away to a comfortable 33–20 win.