My son has died. It has to mean we stop and think But coaches are preparing players to play in a war
Mourning father wants action to stop more deaths
THE footage is devastating to any who view it but i ncalculably so for the father whose teenage boy it depicts being tackled so brutally, sustaining injuries so terrible that he was dead within 48 hours.
It was never Philippe Chauvin’s choice to request the film and view the catastrophic moment dozens of times, frame by frame, but the French rugby authorities’ reluctance to acknowledge its significance has made it part of the fabric of his life.
A year has passed, now, since Nicolas Chauvin died, just five minutes into a match for Stade Francais Espoirs against BordeauxBegles, and still his father waits for something substantially more than sympathy. Consider his struggle to be heard, as the French Rugby Federation (FFR) today proclaim they are committed to youth by fielding one of their youngest ever sides against England at Stade de France. And as England coach Eddie Jones says his aim is to be ‘brutal on the gainline’ in Paris.
It is the initial look on Nicolas’s face, radiating delight, which makes what followed on that winter’s day a year or so ago even more harrowing to watch back, as The Mail on Sunday did in his father’s house in Paris. ‘Nico’, as the family knew him, is more than equal to the test and the pace, in his first start for the Espoirs — the ‘hopefuls’, in the French term for an academy team. In the first few minutes, he comfortably collects a high ball. He gathers a pass from his scrum-half, after helping win a turnover, and crosses the try line.
‘ He was very happy,’ says his father. ‘In this moment, he was so happy. He looked free, he knew his job. Imagine you go for your first start for this team, you find the tempo of the game, which is so important in rugby, and then… this try.’
There is an undercurrent, though. Two minutes into the match, the film captures a player — whose number Chauvin requests remains unpublished — making a high tackle that brings a warning from the referee but no sanction, or dismissal. Then, the catastrophe. Nicolas, wearing No6 in the pink colours of the Espoirs, calls for and receives a ball from the fly-half and fractionally drops his shoulders as he faces two players in the black shirts of Bordeaux who are sprinting towards him. Logically, he seems to have concluded that running between them is the best means of evading them.
It is t he l ast mental calculation he will make in the sport which has absorbed and shaped him as an individual. The teenager has a quarter of a second’s reaction time after receiving the ball, as the two players hit him simultaneously in a double tackle, pulverising him and launching him backwards. The first blow comes from Nicolas’s left: a shoulder-toshoulder collision. The second of the tacklers, recipient of that earlier caution, has his arms around the head of the young flanker as he upends him. That tackler’s feet have left the floor and he is in what is known in rugby as the ‘ s w i mmi n g pool’ position — out of control — as he lands Nicolas on the ground, where the 18-year-old lies, motionless and unconscious.
The crowd noise is extraordinary and perhaps speaks to the kind of warped spectacle a minority have now come to see at a rugby match. There is a collective gasp at first, and then applause. Paramedics spend 20 minutes trying to revive Nicolas before he is taken to Bordeaux’s Centre Hospitalier Universitaire. He has fractured his second vertebra — an injury more consistent with the impact of a car crash — which causes cardiac arrest and, because of starvation of oxygen, brain damage. He undergoes emergency surgery, to no avail. Those who tackled him are not even cautioned, though on the video evidence, how the tackle was possibly missed is unfathomable.
Father and son both knew there were risks attached to the level of rugby he was entering. Just a few weeks before Nicolas’s death, 21year-old Louis Fajfrowski, a wing for Stade Aurillac, died in the changing rooms after a hefty tackle in a game against Rodez. The two of them discussed that incident in the living room of the modest family home in the Paris suburb of Champigny-sur-Marne. ‘I told him, “This level of rugby is different”,’ says Chauvin. ‘I said, “Ask around your team-mates about whether the insurance provision is different. But don’t talk about this in front of your mother”.’
Chauvin waited until he had buried his son to view the tackle, produce a detailed dossier analysing why it was unlawful, and then seek to speak to the authorities. Pascal Pape, the Stade Francais academy director, prevailed on FFR president Bernard Laporte to meet the father. The president subsequently told a radio station that players had behaved dangerously and should be banned.
There was a terrible context. Nicolas was one of four young players who died in French rugby between May 2018 and January this year. ‘[The FFR] told me: “We are your family and will help you”,’ says his father. Beyond a full professional analysis of the circumstances of his son’s death, Chauvin wanted rugby to look at the normalisation of violence as players have become bigger, faster and more powerful in the professional era. And at how tackles above shoulder height — each one potentially fatal — are by no means beyond the pale.
Nothing happened. On July 11 last year — which would have been Nicolas’s 19th birthday — the Bordeaux public prosecutor’s office closed a short investigation into the death, concluding it was an accident. Chauvin was refused access to the file which explained the reasoning and says he has not heard from Laporte since that day. In October, he filed a manslaughter lawsuit, which will allow him access to the original report.
Asked by The Mail on Sunday for an interview with Laporte, the FFR said: ‘Bernard Laporte has already answered every question about this accident.’ The federation said in a recent statement that it ‘respects the grief of all the families involved in the tragic accidents as it always has, and has no comment on the steps taken by Mr Chauvin’.
The FFR say they have introduced a lower tackling height at community level, and have a ‘zero tolerance policy on unacceptable behaviour such as unfair or dangerous play’.
Chauvin views his son’s death as anything but an accident. But he wants above all else to make it clear that he does not want to attack the sport. ‘Rugby has been part of our lives,’ he says. ‘It was my son’s life. We watched games together. We talked about the game together.
‘But it is not a game of destruction. Not one in which you play to wipe out an opponent. The spirit of