Student of the Game

One of the hardest things has been gaining independence – I don’t mean living by myself, domesticating myself, that’s all been comparatively easy. I mean rugby independence, and that’s probably not the best way to put it; it’s more a personal responsibility. No more do I have people patting me on the shoulder telling me I’m the bees knees, the captain, top dog. That was one of the reasons I moved away from Scotland, home of the comfort zone rugby player. If I do something badly then people will tell me, the French are not shy, but they compliment too, often by patting my head, “bien joué poulet”. But if I come away from a poor session, it’s no longer home to a nice meal and chats and school work to take my mind off it. There’s less getting away from it, and I’m slowly but surely learning to control these sorts of thoughts, to take what I can from a session then put it to bed and get on with my evening.

I’ve also finally nailed down how the coaches want me to play as a fly-half. In the UK, a scrum-half will often ask his 10, “do you want the ball coming onto it or do you want it more standing still?” This question doesn’t seem to exist in France. A 10 should come flying onto the ball as fast as he can, running straight at the defence. The only thing that changes is where he starts running from, so whether he will be playing flat or slightly deeper – obviously depending on whether the ball is to be shipped wide or not. The flatter the better, they agree, but if the ball is to go wide, then you can afford to be slightly deeper as the pace that you take the ball should hold the defence enough. This has all been hard for me to grasp and assimilate but I’m getting there.

And this is also why I moved away for this year, to experience these other points of view, ways of doing things. I am now more of a complete player if I am able to play in different ways, and some student of the game, too. That’s not to say there’s anything prescriptive about it. Everything is looked at in the context of a game, where the pass ends up. There are no clipboards or boxes being ticked. When our coach hands out the shirts before the match, as he goes round and shakes everyone’s hands, he has always said the same thing: “Faire jouer. Plaisir. Joue avec plaisir, amuse toi. Bon match”. Maybe he’s trying to unleash the Frenchman in me, to break down my dour exterior and natural game as he sees it, pragmatically schooled in the mud.

This whole year was meant to be a learning experience (rugby and otherwise), with a view to the long-term (rugbywise). But so far, being allowed to develop away from Scotland in a testing environment where I’m frequently the youngest, the smallest, always the foreigner (never the slowest, thankfully) is definitely the best place to be. Strange to think that I’ve been here nearly 7 months. The hardest bits are well and truly gone, stored away. The only way I can become more a part of the club is if I drop a winning goal in the Championship final. And that’s on the 29^th May, so for now all I have to worry about is the 4 pronged challenge of March (see earlier post) which will determine our seeding for the play-offs. The speed is making its return like the prodigal son, the cobwebs are being dusted off the left hip and I’m excited. Before I know it it’ll be Edinburgh in the summer, so determined to make the most of the next wee while, mais avec plaisir!!

And it's no, nay, never, No nay never no more, Will I play the wild rover No never no more.

These evening trips to team training provide some of the more surreal moments. This evening was no different. I was in the car (no bus this evening) with my old pal who first brought me to Racing and who organises the Crabos and recruitment in general. We had been driving around 20 minutes, discussing mainly Scottish rugby, our amazing national ability to keep hold of the ball (and do nothing with it, I retorted), and difficulties in numbers (around 40,000 in Scotland compared with 20,000 in the Paris area alone). After we had exhausted all chat possibilities we went rummaging through his cd collection and with great excitement, my driver insisted I find his cd of Irish folk songs.

Eventually it was found, ‘Irish Pub Songs’, and this kept us more than occupied for the rest of the journey there and back as well. Before we knew it we were belting out ‘The Wild Rover’, with myself singing more of the actual words, though only just. Singing about the River Liffey while literally driving along the banks of the Seine was quite extraordinary, as was my chauffeur’s knowledge of the tunes, he had every little fiddle solo par coeur. He was clearly very touched by this music, I thought it was nice to just sing-a-long like we were in some Limerick pub. At one point, while mentioning his lack of words, he pointed out that one song was clearly very heartfelt and full of folklore and history and pride. I didn’t tell him it was about some cheeky goings on down by the Liffey with some maiden’s skirt.

If ever my ancestors try to find me, they would do well to look in the French census records, as of last night, I am on them! A woman came to the door and handed me lots of sheets and said she would be round tomorrow evening to pick them up. She was gone by the time I was starting to make my excuses. So I battled through these forms. “Anniversaire...can do that, sexe, can tick male, nationalité, yep” and that is about as far as I got. There were individual forms and a flat one. I haven’t the slightest idea how our flat is heated, the size of the rooms and all sorts of things like that. There are so many blanks and bits scored out and written again that I am awaiting a knock on the door from the Police and my imminent arrest for contempt of the Republic.

March Preview

March is a big month, a lot of high-pressure rugby to be played which is why I’ve decided to make the most of next weekend (still on holiday) and come home for a long weekend to recharge the batteries before the final push for the play-offs. We are already very well set for qualification but we have set ourselves the goal of winning the pool. If we are 1^st in our pool then the first knock-out round becomes much easier as we’d be playing a 4^th placed team from another pool. So there are 6 pool games to be played.

March looks like this:

Sunday 6th March:	Racing Metro	Bourgoin
Sunday 13th March:	Racing Metro	US Bressanne
Sunday 20th March:	RC Massy Essonne	Racing Metro
Sunday 27th March:	Racing Metro	Clermont Auvergne

The fixture list has worked out well for us as we welcome Bourgoin and Clermont to Paris second-time round. We could have beaten Bourgoin earlier in the season in the Alps but lost our heads and then the scrum was infamously demolished in Clermont (since rebuilt, we think...). So we are genuinely confident about turning these teams over at Colombes. Massy are unknown abroad but very well respected for their junior section, alma mater of Mathieu Bastareaud. Bressanne should provide some respite in March as we put 69 points past them at their place.

Into April, we have to fit in our one cancelled game – a trip to Dijon and then the Pool finale against Stade Francais. Despite a run of indifferent form I have been training well and with the nice balance of rest and work in the next couple of weeks I should be peaking for the pressure games at the end of the season.

In seasons past my form has decreased as the season has progressed, starting with a bang then heading down but this season it feels different, mainly because I was never going to start the season with a bang given all the change and upheaval at the start of the season. So I’m looking forward to catching up with Edinburgh next weekend and then returning ready for 4 wins out of 4 in March. 

Easy Like a Sunday Morning

Totally free days with no commitments are like gold dust, so imagine when a free weekend comes along. Keen not to waste these 48 hours, they require careful planning – hours of sweet nothing carefully scheduled in a mix of trips into Paris etc. So yesterday was an excellent day, the sort of day I look forward to in the depths of 6 sets of Soulevé Terre (deadlift to you and me). There is a sense that these free weekends are things that I earn, using the thought of them in the week to propel me through training. Work hard, get your rewards – those rewards are normally a win but when there’s no match then the rewards become freedom.

So I ‘pottered’ around the flat, acting the domesticated creature I have become before heading into Paris just after lunch. I got off at St Michel, glanced at Notre Dame not looking her best in the driech weather and walked the 500 yards to Shakespeare’s bookshop. I bought a couple that could just about fit in my pocket and headed back out into the drizzle. Down the Boulevard St Michel, right turn onto the Boulevard Saint Germain and walk along until the cinemas appear on opposite sides of the street. These are the real Boulevards of Paris, the Champs-Elysées doesn’t come close with its international chain stores and soul-less atmosphere. The 5^th and 6^th arrondissements are where it’s at. ‘The King’s Speech’ or ‘Le Discours d’un Roi’ was on at 4.30 so I bought my ticket and headed off to do something for a couple of hours.

It’s easy to feel bad that I ended up in the world’s most famous coffee chain with a hot chocolate and a muffin when I could have been in any one of the numerous cafés that flank the Boulevard. But, when I think about it, everyone around me in the coffee shop was French and I have a sneaking suspicion that many of those sitting outside under the heated parasol things smoking and watching the world go by won’t have been French. Hard to tell, and it’s obviously less the case in February, but it’s just a suspicion.

I also found myself in a couple (okay 3) male fashion shops. They’re quite a nice way to while away a warm 10 minutes, nodding politely and smiling awkwardly to the effeminate man who comes bounding up to you like a puppy explaining where the new collections are situated and where you can find last season’s stuff (the cheap stuff is what they should say). So I plot a course towards the cheap stuff, not wanting to walk straight there looking like the scaff I am, if he hasn’t noticed this already by my clothes. After taking one look at a price tag in the new collection I say ‘sod this’ and march directly to the cheap(er) stuff. Having noticed that this is also too expensive I take a feel of the material on a jumper, make sure he can see me and turn my nose up at the material. I then walk out, dignity intact onto the next shop where the same routine is inevitably played out.

‘The King’s Speech’, despite the slightly off subtitles (use of Angleterre when not strictly correct) left me even more of a monarchist than I was when I walked in. I felt a strange separation between me, upstanding member of the realm, and the bunch of revolutionaries I was watching it with, thinking, with a completely simplistic view of history, ‘You had a King but you ruined it. Unlucky’.

Phonetics, Ficelles and the Pere Noel?!

I realised last night that I had to go and take my phonetics test this morning before my class at 10, a horrible realisation after a promising but tiring day in Exeter. I managed to get to the Blvd. Raspail in record time and eventually took my test. Now I normally think, through English speaking arrogance that my accent is quite good, only occasionally having to shout in someone’s ear very slowly to be understood. But this morning, I cracked. She asked me to repeat several basic phrases after her but a combination of this unnatural way of speaking and a nervous desire to say it the way she said it meant my throat went missing in action. That is, the wee ‘grr’ that is present in many words went missing. I reminded myself of an English postman who was in my class at the Alliance Francaise for a week and spoke French with a cockney accent.

After this letdown, she pointed out to me that I was not bad, though had the usual problems that come with being an ‘anglophone’. So every second week now begins at 8.30 everyday for an hour of phonetics. I then chose the 2 lectures that I will attend each week. My choices were heavily limited by my training schedule but look fine all the same.

Tuesday afternoon is Cultural and Social Geography of France and Thursday is 20^th Century Theatre...

On my way back to my normal French class I passed by my ‘local’ bakery that I frequented each morning during the Alliance Francaise days. I went in, expecting to be greeted like the prodigal son with ficelles aux lardons et fromages handed to me from every direction. But no, I ordered the same thing I had for months and we went through the same routine just like the old days. Gone, and well and truly forgotten with no attention paid to the fact that I had kept the place afloat for months.

The Sorbonne is a very different environment to the A.F. It’s more formal: I was made to sign a contract basically saying I would behave, dress respectfully, respect other cultures and sit there and swallow the conditional like a mute. I will never find out if the prof is a devoted admirer of Jean-Jacques Rousseau or his thoughts on French politics as that would be showing a viewpoint which is dangerous... Having said that, there is a nice balance to the course which should lead to me progressing quite quickly in more of a university environment.

I trained this afternoon like a man possessed. Sometimes I find myself in this mood when the air feels easier to run through and the weights just feel lighter. I have heard that this may be what is commonly known as not being overly tired but it’s hard to tell. Best to cash-in on days like these and train hard to make up for the inevitable days when it just won’t be there.

I once wrote about the frustration of French infants who babble away in French in front of me, before I remember it’s their mother toungue. Well, at the bus stop this evening a very cute pair of 3 year olds decided I was the pere noel (Santa) and were pointing and chatting away. Their nanny crudely mentioned my lack of white beard. I managed to babble something back about shaving after Christmas so no-one knew who I was which they seemed to giggle at. Or they were laughing at this silly foreigner trying to speak French and pretending to be Father Christmas.

Next week is technically a week off from the rugby at the club, except a couple of training sessions with the Crabos. With the lectures beginning, it’ll be good to have more flexibility to fit in the gym sessions when I want. I’ve a plan with which I hope to set about finding my side-step again, sadly gone missing in amongst all this ‘French Flair’. Last seen somewhere at New Field in the autumn of 2009, any information on its whereabouts gratefully received!

Antony (south) - Centre of the World

My local pizzeria (closed on Mondays, just in case you were thinking about it) had several awkward looking couples picking away at their Hawaiians as I walked home. I was just in at the club for recuperation after yesterday: 40 minutes cycling, split into 10 mins, 20, 10. I then headed straight for the hot bath, one of life’s great pleasures. I then hit the cold, then the hot, then the cold again, and so on.

Me and public transport are getting on quite well these days, as if there’s a telepathic link telling the driver to arrive just as I saunter up to the station or the bus stop. But I was left hitting the side of the bus this evening as it sped off, the scummy driver deliberately unaware of me just as the doors shut. I then proceeded to walk to the next stop up the road, as if it would then arrive sooner. On my way I saw an advert for the 23^rd Annual Antony Semi-Marathon!! Any keen runners out there keen to sample some of Paris’ finest suburban landscapes should book their entry too. 5th of March, making it the premier sporting occasion of the day for most who will be reading this.

Back on my bus, there are several things which get my goat. One of these is the elderly. Let me explain. The French are a very proud people, and the older you become as a French person, the more proud you seem to become. They are also very polite, so I feel a huge pressure from everyone on the bus to offer my seat. I would do this naturally, of course, but 20 pairs of eyes are very intimidating. This pressure also comes from the person of age who has just got onto the bus, dying (let me finish), dying to be offered a seat. So I offer, and they nearly always refuse. They just like to be asked.

My local boulangerie, purveyors of too many lovely types of bread, have put a notice up about their closure from the 21^st February to the 6^th March. The reason given is due to the law concerning conges payés. Now I have looked this up and apparently it’s a paid holiday?! They have to close because of a law relating to paid holiday. It’s extraordinary and the only thing preventing it from being one of the most French things going is that it’s the boulangerie. How will the population of South Antony survive?! Well, thoughtful people that they are, they have thought of this, and have written the name and address of the nearest boulangerie on the notice. (closed on Mondays too – just don’t come to my ‘hood on a Monday).

Lyon 0 - 16 Racing

"Racingmen, olé olé olé"

This was a monumental victory. Lyon had deserved to beat us in Paris in October, dominating us in the tight (we won 18-15 in the end) and so it was especially pleasing today to see us rumble and rumble on through our much vaunted rolling maul. It was a poor quality match though, marred by ill-discipline. We received 2 yellow cards. Lyon are a very slick outfit with an excellent junior section.

Not much to say really for this was not an expansive game played á la main. We were always the better team though Lyon helped us with their ill-discipline and handling errors. Beginning with the positive, I helped set-up our try with a mazy run, a dummy and a pass across a couple of stranded defenders. I kicked 11 points, though missed 6 easy ones too, passed solidly and failed to judge the wind correctly all day, booming one punt dead and several others into grateful waiting arms. Defensively...well, let’s not go there. But we won, right? And there lies the difficulty, to reconcile a brilliant away win with nagging doubts at the very front of my mind about the standard of my game, the things that just didn’t function.

Thankfully the train journey back was the perfect way to forget all about these doubts for a couple of hours. Obviously rugby tradition prevents me from divulging the details but the beer was bought, the train bar totally taken over and good luck to any poor member of the public who wanted to walk through this section of the train. The atmosphere was brilliant as the Reichel had won too. The French have plenty of rowdy songs and the songbook was exhausted. This is definitely one of those times that I will look back on with immense fondness. One particular song went through each position and when yours came up you had to dance in the middle, under a shower of alcohol. La Marseillaise was sung, as was O Flower of Scotland, sort of...

The plan was to go out in Paris this evening and I was really looking forward to it. One of my big regrets up to this point is the lack of socialising that has been done as a team, and by myself. Playing games on a Sunday doesn’t help, though everyone seems to be on holiday this week so this evening seemed set. Sadly, a breakdown in communication meant that I never made it into Paris, after lots of texts and phonecalls, with no idea where anyone was or where they were heading. So an unfortunate way to end the day; waiting at the station, staring at my phone, but an excellent day nonetheless.

In fact, the day has really ended with me writing this, munching on Percy Pigs, trying desperately to remember some of the words to one of the songs from the alcohol and testosterone fuelled haze left hanging in the train bar. It’s just not going to happen, is it.

Paris in the Spring

Sometimes I get so caught up in what’s going on around me: trying to listen in on a conversation, trying to formulate verbs in the future simple, humming along to Dougie Maclean, that I lose track of the bigger picture. I’m always reminded of what I’m doing out here when we’re in the bus on the way to training and we descend into the Paris basin and we come flying round a corner, the Eiffel Tower just sitting there. It never fails to strike me as a reminder that I’m sitting in a bus on the way to training in Paris, with French people in a French team. It sounds silly, especially after 6 months (!) but it always makes me sit back and think ‘Crikey!’

And so it happened this evening, increasing my good mood even further. I’ve been saying to anyone who’ll listen today that summer has arrived, cue jokes about 13 degrees and full sunshine being my normal summer. I even cracked a gag about sun cream, went down raucously well. There has been a comfortable atmosphere around the club these last few days, perhaps because the Espoirs (u23s) don’t have a game this week so the place is generally more relaxed. And then there’s the sun, of course. In fact, when I arrived at the training ground this afternoon, I nearly walked straight through a game of boules being played by several of the top pros and members of the management team. I stood and watched for a bit, enjoying the Frenchness of the scene in the spring sunshine. Have I mentioned that it’s been sunny all day?

The biggest news of the day, however, is that I began my Sorbonne career this morning with an introductory first French lesson. There are many positives: it begins at 10, giving me a bit longer in bed; it’s really close to Luxemburg station; it finishes at 11.50. This is all forgetting that the prof seems a really nice guy and the class seem...well... I am the sole male in the class of 15. I am about twice the size of everyone else (except an American heffer) and feel a bit like Gulliver in the land of the Lilliputians (until I reach training in the afternoon). I remarked on my facebook that the class can be split into either North Korean Communist Party Member or American Nun. This is a slight exaggeration as there is a Columbian and an Iranian too.

This weekend promises much. Tomorrow I have to go and buy textbooks which should be the dullest part of the day before heading to the pub for an afternoon of relaxed rugby viewing. I’m trying out The Great Canadian Pub on the recommendation of a friend as apparently it’s easier to get a seat than the Auld Alliance, which, for all its charm, isn’t always the easiest place to watch Scotland. Sunday means another train trip from the Gare de Lyon to Lyon (believe it or not), a route I feel I know very well by now. Tonight’s run through was appalling, simply awful, so we should play wonderfully well what with our breathtakingly continuous off-loading and support play!

A la prochaine...

A rugby field is longer than it is wide, so why not attack in the same fashion?

Wednesday night’s session was an eye opener about French rugby, especially in light of the weekend international. Basically it was a 2 hour lesson in keeping the ball moving, keeping it off the ground and that old adage ‘making the ball do the work’. First we crowded in to a changing room and got a video presentation on some examples of what we wanted to start happening naturally: everyone who takes the ball advances the pace of the ball, it never slows down. The coach frequently looked at me and I got the impression he was talking directly to me, possibly because I’m the stand-off, possibly because I’m Scottish and he doubts how natural this way of playing was and partly because of the faults he saw in Scotland’s play on Saturday: too sideways, too many rucks, too much slow ball, though it all looked very nice.

So out on the pitch we basically played 15 on 15, stopping whenever we were deemed to have failed. This was often when there was a ruck, and definitely when it was slow. The aim was for everyone who carried the ball to have the triangle of support players behind him. This was where McGeechan came in (not literally...). It made me quite proud that Geech, a Scot, is revered abroad like this. But then again, he’s never got the credit north of the border that he deserves, while a messiah down south.

We played and played for what seemed like hours, it was knackering stuff, not just moving from ruck to ruck like we might normally do but continually playing with the ball off the ground. If the triangle is in place behind the ball carrier then there should, in theory, be no need for rucks as the ball carrier does all he can to stay on his feet fully in the knowledge that he has support players and as soon as the ball begins to slow in a collision (as it naturally does when coming into contact with a defender), he can simply move it on to the man coming on at pace, thereby not getting bogged down in the contact.

A rugby field is longer than it is wide, so why not attack in the same fashion?

Ironically, while watching France exploit space so well on Saturday, I was already thinking about how Dusautoir naturally, when tackled, works extremely hard to free his arms. This freeing of the arms in an effort to move the ball on to someone coming at pace is maybe more important than trying to blast through the tackle by yourself.

What all this did, as the coach mentioned at the start to me, is partially dispel the myth of French flair. When we see the French breakaway off turnover ball and see the offloads come and the running lines and it looks lovely, it isn’t ‘flair’. It’s a ball carrier/support system that has been drilled into these players since they were young. It’s natural, it just happens like a click of the fingers. We hear a lot about how the French play so loose and in such a disorderly fashion but on Wednesday night, the word ‘order’ was used all the time, order out of disorder. It all comes from this deep support play, an insistence that the ball carrier isn’t selfish and everyone else holds their depth and makes sure they add pace, not slow the movement down. So often on Wednesday night, with only 4 people down one touchline, the ball could be advanced half the pitch through continual offloads and support play.

Some of the best examples of this working were found on the Lions ’09 Tour to SA where they cut the defence open so many times. They didn’t go round them, creating space out wide as we so often hear these days. They just went through them, 3 or 4 of them at a time.

I’ve often thought about the differences in the rugby between here and Scotland – ever since I found myself totally lost in the pre-season games of touch –but never really been able to put my finger on it. There have been little things that I have maybe touched on here and there, but Wednesday night was the first time I felt like I’d pinned something down.

It’s exhilarating stuff, and clearly, I find it fascinating.

Cracking Weekend!

It is an outstanding day in Antony, the sun is blaring down. A day I am enjoying from the comfort of the flat, and more specifically, my bed. This is the same Antony which seemed to be rocked by the sight of people in kilts. Cars weren’t exactly swerving off the road but I did receive several honks in the morning, people swerving round me on the street and a great deal of awkwardness on the bus. By the evening, this pleasant curiosity had been replaced by something more sinister. Local ‘youths’ thought it funny to shout, have a pop, act the hard man, “Qu’est-ce que tu regarde, toi?” all from the safety of the other side of the road, as another person leered from the door of a pub. But to dwell on these incidents would paint an inaccurate picture of a wonderful day.

Paris’ Left Bank regularly sees far weirder sights than an invasion of Scots, not to mention what is to be found in the Marais, so the reception in the centre of town was slightly different. We spent the morning walking around, taking in the atmosphere and greeting fellow people in tartan as if they were neighbours walking down the high street. We ended up at the Pompidou Centre and squinted at some modern art before lunch at a restaurant specialising in pig’s trotters. By the end of lunch, we were the only people within earshot so the iphone came out and begun blaring the Murrayfield Pipes and Drums, to get us in the mood.

The train up to the Stade de France was good fun, made even better by the news from home. The Stade rose up in front of us, mightily impressive. We were expecting poor seats, but I don’t think they exist. With not many Scots around us, our singing attracted a lot of attention, and I am currently taking up some space on some poor soul’s mobile phone. The crowd went eerily quiet at time and then would suddenly burst into La Marseillaise. The result was definitely secondary when it became clear that the French had a new found respect for the rugby we played.

Sunday was a different proposition. Bobigny were so poor it barely merits a match report. We were fairly clinical and did well to wrap up the bonus point so quickly but it was a match I never really got into. I felt like I should have been carving through this lot but it just wasn’t happening. There were numerous knock-ons from both sides and the lineout and scrum were messy. I got even more frustrated which only served to make things worse, kicking out on the full, little uncharacteristic things like that. Maybe I just wanted to perform in front of the family. I was taken off after 60 minutes, simply as part of our rotation policy when we are thrashing teams.

The most exciting part of the whole day was having a Scottish referee. I met him before the match and had a nice chat and it was the sole interesting about the match. When he would say “dernier pieds” to the French, he would say “last foot” to me, in an effort to keep us onside. However, it wasn’t all niceties in Scottish. I must admit that playing in France means I occasionally allow myself to slip into shouting frustrated unpleasantries in English, safe in the knowledge that no-one will understand me. I got caught out yesterday although we both found it quite funny.

Usual week this one, still not started my much awaited Sorbonne course yet though so it's just about keeping boredom at bay. Will just be making sure I’m in top nick for our tricky away match to Lyon on Sunday. We only just scraped past them in October when I wasn’t playing so we expect a big one.

Stretched, Refreshed, and Playing By Myself

Since returning to Paris two weekends ago, a physical and mental rut had set in. Maybe I was all rugby-ed out, but my hip, injured in October, was causing me some bother. So after a lot of stretching over the past 10 days, today I put my boots on, took a ball and just went out and played by myself. Thursday is a fairly light day so after doing some weights and running on the treadmill, I laced up. There is something very fun, amongst all the drills and coaches talk and ways of catching the ball, in just going out and grubbering the ball around, throwing high passes to yourself, sidestepping imaginary defenders after extragavant dummies and taking the occasional drop at goal. There was no one around to hear my sound effects as I burned some poor made-up soul.

And so after a short period which my teammates would call ‘nul’, I’m feeling refreshed for the weekend. It is, after all, a long season and there will inevitably be peaks and troughs, mentally and physically. Maybe the best thing to do is not to fight them, let them work themselves out. This promises to be an excellent weekend as the family come to Paris. Arguably the biggest game of our weekend will be at the Stade de France as I get to unashamedly flaunt my nationality without feeling like a weirdo. Doubts have been raised at the club as to whether I will actually wear my kilt when it’s so cold, but I don’t think they really understand. The kilt will be worn and pictures taken to prove it. If Scotland win, it won’t come off for days.

The second match of the weekend is versus Bobigny up at Colombes. We beat Bobigny earlier in the season when I had a fanclub in the stand too (James). At the time, I had my best game of the season so hopefully the same will happen in another bonus point win.

The hot/cold baths are where I’ve enjoyed some of my best conversations with people. Today it was the turn of the espoirs stand-off, a really nice guy who was in my situation last year in playing for the crabos. We talked about everything from international rugby to the club (and who’s leaving and staying) to what we were having for dinner. He told me he was from Alsace to which I said something about the turbulent history of that area. Apparently some French still think it is part of Germany. I mumbled something about the town of Berwick being English/Scottish etc. but I don’t think it really stood up for comparison with Alsace-Lorraine, so I shut up...