Biarritz explore options far and wide
All has been quiet on the professional rugby front in France this week as fans looked ahead to what should have been the final match of this year’s tournament and the primetime highlight of Super Saturday – Les Bleus showdown with Wales at Stade de France.
Covid and the rescheduling of France-Scotland for the evening of Friday, March 26 – and the frustrating prospect that Gregor Townsend may have to field a side without his Premiership-based players – conspired to dilute yesterday’s three-international rugby spectacle.
Super Saturday weekend is traditionally left free of domestic professional fixtures over on this side of the Channel and the leagues have caught up with postponed fixtures, so there was no Top 14 or ProD2 action this weekend.
Off the pitch, however, things have not been quite so quiet – notably in the most south-west of French professional clubs. In pure rugby terms, all seems rosy at fivetime French champions Biarritz Olympique.
The squad – bolstered by the likes of Steffon Armitage and Henry Speight – is playing smart rugby in a promising season.
A surprise home defeat to fourthplaced Oyonnax last time out was a rare blot in the copybook – they have lost just six out of 23 matches this season. The club sits third in the ProD2, still 11 points clear of Joe El-Abd’s Oyo, and is in with a shout of returning to the French top flight for the first time since 2014.
So far so good. But a quietly simmering row between the club and the town council over the redevelopment of the historic Parc des Sports Aguilera threatened to boil over this week. Briefly, the local authority finally decided it could not afford to cover the cost of a long-planned and much-needed upgrade of the complex and instead suggested private investors should stump up the required euros.
Club owner Charles Gave and president Jean-Baptiste Aldigé reacted badly to this news and threatened to take their club home. Or, at least, elsewhere. It may feel as if we’ve all been here before. For the longest time, the idea of a merger between Biarritz and nearby Bayonne was a never-ending story that never came to pass.
Nearby San Sebastien, some 50km and a national border from Biarritz, was one new venue up for consideration – but the northern Spanish city refused to consider the idea without backing from Biarritz council. They even looked to the other end of the southern border of France for a new location – to Monaco. Some reports had them fielding interested calls from the ambitious mayors of towns and cities north of Clermont.
Then they looked about as far away as it’s possible to get from their Basque roots while still operating within French borders – Lille, some 1,000km, give or take a kilometre, away.
Relocating a professional sports club in France is not simple. They are not standalone entities and must be linked to an amateur association. The pro side could, in theory, maintain its link with its amateur section in Biarritz while playing its professional matches somewhere else, but the notion of a Biarritz side playing its home matches in Lille would be beyond bizarre – even by standards that kept the Biarritz-Bayonne mergers in the news for so long.
Another option would be to join forces with another amateur club. That may well be the way the club is going. Regional newspaper Sud Ouest reported on Thursday that Aldigé had travelled to Lille to firm up plans for a union with Marcq-en-Baroeul from the start of the 2022/23 season.
But, within hours, the Federale 1 club issued a blunt message on social media – Biarritz’s future, wherever it may end up, “will not be built on the ashes of our club”. Which, as rejections go, seems definitive.
Then there’s the question of players and staff – not all of whom may be willing or able to move. And fans? For a while, Lille had a club that was pushing for a spot in the professional ranks, but it fell victim to the high price of its own ambitions, and had to be wound up. The question, now, is: is there still an appetite for professional rugby in the far north of France? And will they accept an imported club?
This looks a lot like a new chapter in that never-ending Biarritz story. For now, the only thing approaching certainty is that the club, whether it’s in the ProD2 or Top 14, will be at Parc des Sports Aguilera next season. After that? If the schism between club and council is as wide as reports currently suggest, who knows?
By midweek, we should know who will take over from the outgoing Paul Goze as president of the Ligue Nationale de Rugby, which runs the professional game in France. As of Friday, the number of candidates dropped to two, as Alain Tingaud withdrew his candidature and threw his support behind La Rochelle president Vincent Merling.
Former Toulouse president Rene Bouscatel stands between Merling and the big chair currently occupied by Goze – and it seems the next few days will be tense. Tradition has it that there’s only one candidate’s name on the ballot paper on the day of the vote. Merling is the ‘establishment’ favourite, but Bouscatel’s campaign has reportedly gained ground in recent days. The horsetrading will be frantic ahead of a meeting of presidential minds on Monday.
As one ProD2 club president said: “It’s going to be a real show this election. Never had I received so many calls from the League’s bosses.”
“Question now is: Is there still an appetite for pro rugby in the far north of France?”