He’s like a duck on a trapeze!
Brendan Gallgher recalls the splendid commentary of France’s rugby-playing priest Abbe Henri Pistre
THERE is a smash hit TV series or even a film combining rugby and religion just waiting to be made although alas, with Sir Alec Guinness long gone, the lead part would have to be cast with much care. A couple more years and a few more bags under his eyes and the rugby-loving Daniel Craig might be your man. Father Brown meets 007. Russell Crowe might fit the bill as well.
It concerns Abbe Henri Pistre, a oncein-a-generation athlete and rugby tyro tipped to captain France in the early 20s who gave that dream up at the age of 22 to become a priest. A man of granite physically, mental iron will, and a temperament that could apparently tend towards irascibility when confronted by idiots on and off the field.
Abbe Pistre wore his Albi club shirt under his cassock at his ordination in Albi’s famous cathedral and most winter mornings when saying Mass at Noailhac Tarn some 10km to the south east of Castres. After Mass every Sunday he would rush down to a local game to compile his waspish match reports for the Courrier Sportif du Tarn.
Local gendarmerie got to know his schedule and recognise his distinctive black capello remano priest’s hat which he waved by way of apology and identification as he drove through red lights in his haste to make the match.
On Monday and Thursday nights vespers would be conducted with indecent haste to enable him to coach at Castres where he was a guiding light, while much later in life he got the call from French TV to be their pundit. If there was a new rugby ground to open he would bless it or a rugby gathering that required grace to be said there was no better man. He was a friend and confidant to long time French Federation President Albert Ferrasse.
Pistre discovered God early on, at the age of 12 when he listened to a sermon from the local priest who had just returned from missionary work in the South Pacific. He was always determined to follow his vocation but, when undergoing fitness testing while serving compulsory military service, it transpired he was an exceptional all-round athlete. In no time he was playing for his regiment and then Albi, a power in the land, who he joined when he moved there to complete his training as a priest. Strong, fast, skilful and durable, he was the epitostripes me of a quality French flanker. And what an athlete. Most summers an athletics meeting was held for all the local rugby clubs to encourage summer fitness work – 100m, 110m hurdles, weight throws, high jump, long jump etc. Albi, as a publicity stunt, decided to enter Pistre as a one-man team and he came second overall despite, for obvious reasons, not being able to enter the 4x100m relay. For two seasons, while studying at the local seminary, he combined his vocation and sport but something had to give and eventually it was rugby. He tried to retire by burning his boots but was induced back for one final game against Perpignan when the team ambushed him before the game and presented Pistre with a fait accomplit having purchased new boots for him. After the match, a draw, he sat down for his last supper as a player and addressed his team “My friends, I have spent unforgettable hours among you. You have taught me what friendship, brotherhood, and love of one’s neighbour might be. Believe me, I shall remember it all my life. Now we will play different matches. I wish you to continue the glorious road where you are engaged. As for me, I will try to carry the ball in the middle of the posts of the Holiness.” His ordination came on December 23, 1923 and after the ceremony his teammates presented him with 12 silver coins wrapped in the Albi club flag. “At home, when someone gets married, we give him a gift. For you today, it’s like a marriage ... so we offer you this,” said the club captain Jean Vaysse. Pistre greatly appreciated the gesture, and by way of a reposte, unbuttoned the top buttons of his cassock to reveal the black and yellow of his Albi shirt.
Pistre had no intention of abandoning the game altogether. After being sent to Noailhac he immediately made contract with Castres to offer his coaching services and that is when he started his anonymous career as a sports journalist. Pistre declined a by-line and even invented a wife in copy to try and throw the church authorities off the scent, usually referring to her as “Virginie, my gentle dove”. One of his match reports started: “Splendid weather, a good crowd, an excellent cigar and my wife in a very agreeable mood.”
His imagination could run wild. “He clung to the ball as though it were a glass of absinthe or a piece of lobster” or, “How could he shine as a forward? It was like expecting a duck to do a trapeze act.”
And he didn’t hold back. After a 3-3 draw between England and France in 1960: “We don’t go to stadiums to see the ball systematically buried, what are undertakers for? Our French players eat too much. What can men with paunches do against the bread-boards they send us from Britain?”
He detested many referees – indeed, he lost a nine-year libel case against one ref he criticised thus: “I have till now stubbornly defended referees. I have stood by the short-sighted, the short of breath, the clumsy, the unlucky and partial... but I will not support the stupid.”
His identity seeped out – although most of the rugby fraternity were in on the secret for years – and then, very late in his career, came to the call to arms from TV where he apparently possessed a McLarenesque turn of phrase although none of the latter’s ability to also call the match. His catchphrase, when insisting it was time for a team to take control was garder l’église au milieu
du village – it is time to put the church back in the middle of the village. Another was his way of describing a collapsed maul or a chaotic ruck...faire tomber la
cabane sure le chien.. literally dropping the house on the dog. He died in 1981 and French Rugby hasn’t seen his like since.