This, along with the Clermont-Auvergne and Stade Francais games, was one of the fixtures I was most looking forward to from the day I saw the fixture list in the summer. The romantic notion of travelling deep into a rugby heartland like Bourgoin was intoxicating. It certainly lived up to what I expected it would be.
The incredibly long day began at the Gare de Lyon, Paris, from which we took the 2 and a bit hour TGV to Lyon. The train has to be my favourite mode of transport and although the area of France between Paris and Lyon is interminably dull, some Steinbeck made up for it. We arrived to pouring rain and got on the coach to the Stade Pierre Rajon. Bourgoin-Jallieu, to give the full title is exactly what a small, rural, rugby dominated town should be. The stadium is much the same, made up of 10 stands that have sprung up over the years. The place won’t be able to hold more than 10,000 people but as I said to myself (FYI - I speak to myself alot) as I looked in through the railing, “I bet they don’t lose many home games”.
French rugby hospitality is really special and we were treated to a fine 3 course meal in the stadium restaurant of couscous and salad etc (at this point I thought that was it), and then pasta with chicken and then some sort of very sweet yoghurt with fruit. I was stuffed and thought there was no way I could play a rugby match in this state. Kevin (real name, but pronounced Keveeeeen) the prop was in his element, after the pasta it seemed like his day’s work was complete. We weren’t to actually play at this ramshackle old place, like Brive, we were to play on the junior pitches - 5 minutes away.
It was cold, very cold, and wet, very wet. However, we started like the bunch of psychos we are, psyched up and playing for our forwards coach who one might have thought had recently passed away on a scrum machine given the amount he was mentioned in the huddle. I was still rubbing my chest from where the captain had decided to punch me. Florian, our ginger-afro-ed, life-loving hooker was feeling my pain. I nailed a couple of long range penalties which I celebrated exuberantly. Our maul was on top despite the amount of abuse he was getting from the touch lines – I made out the word ‘putain’ – but we kept giving away silly penalties. Their 10 dropped a goal to keep them in touch. Then our maul worked sufficiently well enough for us to score though a lack of concentration meant I missed the conversion. Poor.
We were leading at half-time but things started to go wrong. Our affable second-row got sin-binned (mainting my record of someone being sin-binned in every match I’ve played in France, and Bourgoin were heating up. We were ahead when I got substituted with 15 mins to play. I’d happily stop there but you might want to know that we ended up defending a penalty 5 metres out from our own line, some people switched off and they rumbled over for a match winning try. I was left cursing very loudly in English amongst the Bourgoin fans. Interestingly, the men were actually wearing berets. No one wears a kilt when they go to watch the Accies! This place was proper rural France, the air was alpine and the hits were big. So we were left licking our wounds, wondering what might have been.
Final Score: Bourgoin 17 – 14 RM92
No comments:
Post a Comment