Guy Noves preparing for war with president Bernard Laporte
“I wish to re-establish my honour. I do not want people to lose faith in me and consider me as someone I am not”
- Guy Noves
Sacked France team boss Guy Noves is preparing an explosive dossier in support of his £2m claim for unfair dismissal. It alleges that his curtailed reign was betrayed by deliberate sabotage and motivated by personal hatred.
The date for the upcoming hearing on February 19 will ensure full focus on the controversial affair as it comes between France’s Six Nations match against England at Twickenham and their home game against Scotland in Paris.
Noves has now revealed he has turned down Top 14 jobs in order to concentrate all his attention on what he decribes as a passionate fight for justice.
He intends channelling all the mental resolve and strategic planning that helped him coach Toulouse to nine national titles and three European elite trophies into the battle with Laporte.
Noves, a former French international winger who won the title with Toulouse twice as a player, says: “I wish to re-establish my honour. I do not want people to lose faith in me and consider me as someone I am not.
“This is my life, my profession. For this to be questioned today in the way it has been affects me very deeply and all those around me who have believed in me for 25 years.”
The courtroom drama will be the final act in an epic rivalry that has pitted one against the other for decades and harnessed them uneasily for just one year in the service of their country.
Neither has made any secret of the fact they do not care for one another. To such a degree that the demise of Noves was foreshadowed by French media the moment Laporte became Federation president two years ago.
The case Noves will present accuses Laporte and his deputy Serge Simon, former playing pals with Begles and Stade Francais, of pretending to support him. While, at the same time, doing all they could to undermine his authority and put obstacles in the way of the team’s performances.
When they swung the axe last December, replacing him with former Laporte associate Jacques Brunel, they attempted to justify the decision with the extraordinary charge that Noves was guilty of serious professional misconduct.
For not, in their view, developing close enough contacts with the head coaches of Top 14 clubs.
A theme to which Laporte returned in a radio interview in the week, saying: “I understand that Guy Noves is not happy. This pains me because I occupied the same position and it is never easy to lose the job.
“What Jacques Brunel has done is create a closeness with the coaches. Everyone is now talking to each other and it is a win-win situation.”
Noves counters by saying he sent his aides around the country on 70 occasions to cement contacts with the clubs’ coaching, physical training and medical staffs. And he assessed their reports on which he based his selections, all of which he passed on to their club bosses in personal phone calls.
The argument that this charge was a mere pretext for getting rid of a man Laporte did not appoint and, in fact, did not like, remains plausible.
Jean-Frederic Dubois, the national backs coach fired with Noves, is convinced that dislike is too feeble a word to describe the relationship.
He says: “What happened to us was not down to our abilities but to the hatred of other people.”
Even before he became president, Laporte, who coached Stade Francais to the title, spoke not too kindly of Noves, who had won it four times during the same period.
“If you listen to Guy Noves, he is the best there is,” he said. “But, when I was at Stade Francais, we had to create a team. I did not have one given to me as at Toulouse. And, when I arrived at Toulon, we were ninth and had to rebuild the club.
“Guy never wanted to give his players to France, but the national team has always been my priority.”
The final two years of Noves’ truncated contract were worth around £800,000. He clearly thinks the damage to his long-earned standing in the game is worth at least the same again.
Noves claims Laporte imposed an energy-sapping, flag-waving trip on players to Indian Ocean islands before they lost all three matches in South Africa. And slipped a midweek game against the All Blacks into an already packed November Test schedule to further weaken the team’s effectiveness.
He accuses Simon of undermining his authority with the team with the knowledge of Laporte on two occasions. Once when Noves forbade Stade Francais stars to leave the squad he was preparing for a Six Nations match to protest against a proposed merger with Racing. Simon reversed his decision.
And again when he announced in the dressing-room that a defeat in South Africa was unacceptable while France was bidding to stage a World Cup.
Noves adds: “The players understood that, if the manager says No, and there is someone else who can say Yes in his place, it had a similar effect when he spoke in the dressing-room.”
A financial settlement could intervene. But Noves has made a proud trademark of always fighting to the finish.