Brive V Racing Metro 92

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!

'La Stage' - 3 days in Central France

So we set off on Wednesday morning at around 8.30 for Bugeat which is 360 kilometres south of Paris. It was nice for me to notice that lots of people seemed just as nervous and apprehensive as I was. Or maybe they were just tired. Anyway, we got there about lunchtime in heat that was far too much for me. Two squads of about 30 players were in the party, the ‘Crabos’ (under-19s – my team) and the ‘Reichel’ (under-21s). At first I thought that everyone there was in my team and fairly bricked it before being told that half of these behemoths were older.

We were staying at one of France’s Olympic Training Centres – seemed a good place for it, away up in the hills with excellent weather and zero distractions. We trained Wednesday afternoon, though I was still non-contact so actually did very little. That evening we had a meeting where we all had to stand up and introduce ourselves. A slight murmur went around when it came to be my turn. I stood up, tried a smile and said, “Bonjour, je m’appelle Fraser. Je suis Ecossais.” I then got a surge of confidence and went for it! “Pourriez vous parler francais a moi” Who knows what they were expecting but they loved that and the whole room applauded. I felt great.

What also struck me was this squad is not by any means Parisian. There are boys from Normandy to Marseille and some who had previously played for Stade Francais (cue booing).

I returned to my room with my room-mate who I got on quite well with – he was playing in the team for the first year too, didn’t know anyone and was a bit of an outsider. With his shyness matching my lack of language, not much was said.

Thursday morning started with a depressing handling session at 7.30 am. The balls were covered in dew and people were tired and hungry. After breakfast (where I dipped my bread in the chocolat chaud) we trained at 10 am and the standard was far higher. Perhaps expecting French teenagers to do anything at 7.30 am with an empty stomach is asking too much...

After this morning session, which I thought I had done quite well in, one of the elderly gentlemen who is part of the squad (manager?! Kit man?! Doctor?!) said something to me about Townsend! I got very excited at this, especially when someone translated what he said to mean that I resembled Gregor Townsend. I took this as the utmost compliment, and couldn’t quite believe it, especially considering how much I knew the French admired ‘Toony’. However, it was too good to be true. After some seconds of further conversation it turned out that he meant that I looked like Townsend, my face resembled his. With some confidence still remaining from the earlier misunderstanding I then jokingly questioned whether my play was like Townsend, as well as my face (in French) and he eventually conceded that my play was too. Still felt quite chuffed.

Friday had the same programme of training, however, the size of the challenge of training and playing rugby in France fully dawned on me. As training became more technical, I found myself being left behind a little, needing everything explained and getting very frustrated. The same could be said in the afternoon session. This was certainly well out of my comfort zone. However, Saturday was game day and I relished the chance to prove myself in a match. It would at least be more fun than training.