After a morning training session that didn’t inspire a tremendous amount of confidence, we set off for Brive, a town steeped in rugby history and right in the heartland of French rugby union country. I suppose it’s like Edinburgh Accies, city slickers, making the journey into the deepest recesses of the Borders for a game against Hawick. Anyway, it was extremely hot and the ground, where the junior teams play, certainly had character.
The warm-up felt like it was never going to end, I was absolutely dripping and the heat was oppressive. And when the French go for their pre-match jog and call everyone in to run close together, they mean close together, stepping on toes and treading on heels sort of close. I was relieved to be able to get away and do some kicking practice, if only so I had some puff left for the match.
When the jersey’s were handed out (just chucked from the bag, no Lions style ceremony here) I felt a little surge of pride, I was actually going to play a match in Brive for Racing Metro. That was replaced by a chuckle about the whole blue and white stripes thing. The first half went very well, making some good penalty kicks to touch and putting people into some gaps. I was enjoying playing with a nice dry ball behind a pack that was going forward. It was the sort of warm-up game where scrums were taken and penalties kicked to touch rather at goal. We took one early on and then opted for scrums and lineouts.
The second-half was more testing as we made alot of changes and had a couple of players sin-binned (over-officious referee). Brive started to find some rhythm and scored a try in the corner. Then we went down the other end, had them camped under their posts. Their scrum-half passed back to their 10 who cleared the ball. In my lumbering attempt to charge him down I realised he was over the dead-ball line. “Monsieur, monsieur, il etait ici, ici, la ligne, la ligne!!!” I cried out to the ref. He looked at where I was standing and agreed with me, giving us a scrum from which we scored. I, rather than the try scorer, seemed to get all the praise for the try for my piece of Sherlock Holmes play.
In the end, Brive scored a try with the final play of the match to win the game but we weren’t that disheartened. I think we have the makings of a good team with forwards who can maul the ball, a Betsen-esque flanker, a scrum-half with hair like Fabien Galthie and a stepping 15. With the new combinations, return from injury and new calls in another language I was just glad I didn’t sink without trace!
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