Andre, high priest of French running rugby
Andre Boniface, who died earlier this week aged 89, and his younger brother Guy are widely recognised as the innovators and high priests of running French rugby, French flair, fiesta rugby, jouer jouer. Call it what you will, the je ne sais quoi that distinguishes Les Blues when they take the handbrake off. You know it instantly when you see it.
Andre was a lean, athletic, not overly muscular centre, a tad under six feet and quick enough to start his Test career as a wing although he soon switched to centre. He ran – glided – with the ball in two hands and, as far as I can judge, was the first player to perfect the nonchalant no-look inside pass which caused chaos against the less organised defences of the time. And being canny he then realised that just the threat of an inside pass was a weapon and often he just hinted at it before passing more orthodoxly.
His brother’s main party trick was to take the tackle but, with a basketball player’s hands, move the ball round the back of the tackler one-handed and off loading to a supporting colleague, a skill which is making a comeback. Both could burn opponents on the outside, both could kick delicately on the hoof.
So far so very good but together, for club and country, their effect was accentuated massively by their willingness to display all these skills, at pace, from deep in their own half indeed from under their own posts if needed. Commentators talked of their daring and panache but Andre himself gave a much more prosaic explanation.
It was apparently all down to boring repetitive practice and muscle memory, not genius or quasi mystical powers. The analogy he drew was with a concert pianist who, no matter how naturally talented, religiously practised his or her scales for two hours every day. Do that and it was straightforward, not remotely daring, to display said skills from 90 metres out especially as opposition defences are rarely as well organised when they think there is no danger. Indeed, that is the ideal time to attack.
Before Andre started strutting his stuff in the early 50s with Mont de Marsan – known as Stade Montois these days and going great guns in ProD2 – French rugby was typically a volatile forward-dominated beast known at various times for its physicality and violence. The latter was one of the reasons they got booted out of the Five Nations in the 30s – illegal payments to players was the other.
The tribal rugby scene in the southwest and south was brutal with the huge local rivalries upping the ante and lionising the hard cases and immovable objects up front. That’s not to say there weren’t players of great skill – lock Lucien Mias and flanker Jean Prat were as skilful as any forwards who have played the game – but the default setting was for a contest to be settled up front one way or another.
Racing, Stade Francais and Bordeaux – with their ‘dilettante’ student players – had occasionally provided a welcome point of difference but between 1911 and 1959 that illustrious trio failed to win a single French title between them. The heavies had taken over. The hardy mountain clubs and the big city teams, that recruited from those mountain clubs, set the tone for French rugby.
Enter Boniface and Mont de Marsan and geographically it’s important to set the scene a little. Boniface was from the village of Montfort-en-Chalosse which is close to both Dax and Mont de Marsan, small sun drenched towns just north of the Pyrenees. This was – in fact still is despite the protesters – bullfighting country, fiesta towns that have a Spanish feel to them. For many decades they were part of the Spanish circuit with the big name bull-fighters attending corridas at both towns as well as Bayonne, Orthez and Biarritz.
The culture is different, sporting expectations are different. Sporting heroes are expected to be quick footed, nimble, and dramatic. No human can conceivably match a bull with brute strength, you must outthink and outwit the all-powerful beasts. The locals preferred rugby to be played with a matador’s flourish. Rugby matches were also the biggest social occasion in the town and although winning was important, there was also an emphasis on style and entertainment.
Andre Boniface was perhaps the first to fully buy into this and in rugby terms it made sense. If you could not match, head on, the forward power and ferocity of your opponents up front you needed to challenge their lumbering bovine slowness in other ways.
He shone briefly at the start of the 1952 season as a 17-year-old for Dax who at the time were considered slightly the junior partners to Mont de Marsan and towards the end of the season, with Mont going well in the French Championship, there was a controversial transfer which caused a furore but eventually he was cleared to play for his new side and went all the way to the final where they lost against Lourdes.
His influence was instant, and he was among fellow minded players. At the dawn of his club career there was France wing Fernand Cazenave to feed out wide – Cazenave was soon to take over as coach – while for most of his career with club and country brilliant wing Christian Darrouy, another legend of the French game, was a dashing conspirator.
Young brother Guy was his supremely talented midfield partner at club level from 1957 and Test level from 1960 and the versatile Caillau brothers – Andre and Alain – were adventurous performers in the Mont de Marsan back division. They were still fighting the odds but increasingly they gave the big beasts a bloody nose and after a second losing French championship final in 1959, Andre Boniface and Mont de Marsan finally landed a French title in 1963, ironically in poor weather conditions they beat bitter rivals Dax 9-6 in a slugfest. Boniface kicked a penalty and dropped a goal on that occasion.
Much of what has followed in the last 70 years in terms of what we consider to be French rugby par excellence can be traced directly back to the ‘Boni brothers’ as they were dubbed. Jo Maso and the late Jean Pierre Lux for example cited Andre as his great inspiration and role model as a player and they in turn became the template for countless magical and mercurial French centres and outside backs, not least Denis Charvet and Serge Blanco. And it was from the Mont de Marsan club and their attacking tradition, that a young Thomas Castaignede was launched into the rugby world.
As a trailblazer and mould breaker life wasn’t always easy. Andre, despite winning 48 caps over 13 seasons, was dropped on many occasions with his adventurous style being seized upon by the critics, and then the selectors, if things went wrong.
He also, it should be added, played his part in three shared Five Nations titles for France (1954, 1955, 1960), played one game in their first-ever outright title winning season (1959) and was a huge contributor to their championship title in 1962. As a 20-year-old he celebrated his second Test in 1953 by starring in France’s first-ever win over New Zealand and as late as 1965 gave what many consider his definite performance in France’s 22-12 win over Wales when he and Guy were on fire. A few weeks later against Wales his intercepted pass cost France the game and he was dropped one last time.
The death in 1968 from a car accident of Guy, aged 30, on the way back from a game ‘was the one scar in a blessed life’ to use his own words and there was often a tinge of melancholy hanging over the great man when you met him around the rugby scene. In latter years, permanently tanned for his retirement years living close to Hossegor beach, Andre looked like an ageing windswept white haired philosophy lecturer which only enhanced his guru-like eminence. Exactly how you hoped the high priest of French running rugby might look.