RUGBY: GERRY THORNLEYon today's visitors to the RDS, who having been an early force in French rugby, fell away until the arrival of moneybags Jacky Lorenzetti
WHEN RACING Métro 92 make their Heineken Cup debut at the RDS today they will represent both the old and the new aristocracy of French club rugby. In truth, their high profile belies their actual achievements somewhat, for they have only won five French championships, and only two since their third Bouclier de Brennus in 1902. But there is little doubt they are a re-emerging force and their message is simple: Watch Out France, and Watch Out Europe.
Backed by the property tycoon Jacky Lorenzetti, who heads a giant real estate company called Foncia, their ambition knows no bounds. This is only their second season back in the Top 14, and though part of their ambitions to conquer French and European rugby does not incorporate a H Cup for another couple of seasons, they are not of a mind to cock their snook at this competition. They have their image abroad to think of.
Speaking to the French sports daily l’Equipe earlier this week, Lorenzetti was asked if Racing were going to take the H Cup seriously.
“Of course we are going to take the H Cup seriously. We have set our goals in the H Cup and our ambition is to be at the top in 2013 but we are going to remind the British that Racing is still alive. Our jersey (blue and white hoops) is the most known (French) jersey in Britain. The origins of our colours are from overseas, in the blue sky of Cambridge.”
Lorenzetti also made it sound akin to a nothing-to-lose experience and all part of the H Cup’s rich tapestry when adding: “In Dublin we will go with our financial partners and go to the pub to eat very good Irish stew,” he said, adding that Britain and Ireland is “a mythical place for rugby.”
Lorenzetti is one of the high-profile, mega-rich benefactors sweeping through French Top 14 rugby as in the English football Premier League, and all has changed, changed utterly with Racing since his advent to the club presidency just over four years ago.
At that stage they were languishing in the ProD 2, a status hardly befitting the inaugural winners of the Bouclier de Brennus and one of the most celebrated names in world club rugby. Admittedly, they only won the inaugural Bouclier in 1892 by dint of beating Stade Français 4-3 in a one-off match.
After adding titles in 1900 and 1902, for much of the next half-century Racing eschewed shamateurism, preferring to cling to the game’s original ethos. In France, early organised sports mostly belonged to the rich and Racing embodied this. Established as a club in 1882 before the rugby section was founded in 1890, Racing were located in the heart of the Bois de Boulogne in the affluent western district of Paris. Four nobles actually played for them in that first Bouclier success and it was Racing who created the Challenge Yves du Manoir as an antidote to the advent of under-the-table professionalism.
It wasn’t until the 1980s and early 90s that a talented generation of players revived the club’s esprit de corps. In ’87 the French international duo of outhalf Franck Mesnel and winger Jean-Baptiste Lafond, along with fellow backs Yvon Rousset, Philippe Guillard and Eric Blanc wore Basque berets for a game in Bayonne in homage to the home club. Then there was black make-up, dyed blonde hair, wigs, “bald” pates, pelotte attire (white shirts, black jackets and berets, again), long red and white striped shorts (to celebrate the sans-culottes who stormed the Bastille) and long white trousers which they deemed appropriate for various games .
Most famously, they wore pink bow ties in the 1987 final, when Lafond even presented French president François Mitterrand with one before kick-off. Thought they lost, undeterred they wore the pink bow ties in the 1990 final at Parc des Princes, also drinking champagne on the pitch during half-time, before going on to beat Agen.
The five men would go on to set up the hugely-successful Eden Park clothing range, which would go on to have outlets in Dublin and elsewhere. Eden Park still has links with Racing, not least with Blanc (also Mesnel’s brother-in-law) as one of the club’s vice-presidents.
However, the departure and retirement of those players led to the club enduring another fallow period. On foot of Racing’s second relegation in five years to the ProD 2, the rugby section broke away to merge with the rugby section of US Metro, the Paris public transport system.
All then changed when Lorenzetti assumed control in 2006. Having run away with the Pro D2 title two seasons ago, last season Racing reached the expanded barrages by finishing sixth, only losing 21-17 away to eventual champions Clermont.
Racing and boss Pierre Berbizier were less than enamoured with the performance of referee Christophe Berdos that day, and when he was re-appointed for a Racing game this season Berbizier’s verdict that it was “a provocation” to his club earned him a 60-day touchline ban.
Lorenzetti and Berbizier have consistently claimed they will never change the style or heritage of Racing, yet the notion of a team coached by Berbizier ever wearing berets or pink bow ties, or drinking champagne at half-time, would clearly be anathema to him.
Stellar names keep arriving, often at extraordinary cost, with Sebastien Chabal – the most iconic figure in French rugby – reported to be the best paid player in the world on at least €1 million per year and the likes of Francois Steyn and Juan Martin Hernandez not lagging far behind. The latter is ruled out today, as is the France winger Benjamin Fall – a prized capture from Bayonne whom they’ve converted into a thrilling fullback.
But with each of these marquee signings, the response from Berbizier has becoming a running joke in the French media. “We have no stars,” he says, every time, and then adds: “the star is Racing.”
Berbizier established strong set-pieces as the building blocks for Racing and they have the kind of game which could trouble Leinster. Most ominously, their scrum has regularly steamrollered opposing packs, whose players have repeatedly spoken in awe of their power. They launch plenty of direct runners, such as Chabal and centre Albert Vulivuli and they have a big maul and a very aggressive defence, which, with Kiwi flanker Johnny Leo’o leading the defensive line, are highly effective at winning turnovers.
With Jonathan Wiesniewskii (second to Jonny Wilkinson in the Top 14 points chart and the league’s foremost drop-goal exponent last season) and the mighty boot of Francois Steyn, they also have a very big kicking game, which has helped to make Hernandez something of an unused luxury item thus far.
“Yeah, Racing will just bully you,” observed Joe Schmidt this week, “and they’ve got the sort of clientele that are very effective at bullying you. Nallet, Chabal are the household names but they’ve also got some very... how you term “cute players” in Ireland, Johnny Leo’o is a very good player and a really pivotal guy to organising them defensively and slowing ball down. He’s a very effective player for them.”
“They also then can switch and play with a fair bit of quality in their counterattack – I think they’ve shown that with Steyn and Benjamin Fall, Sereli Bobo, they have some real quality in their back three. And their kicking game is very strong, with Steyn from the back and then Wisniewski, who has a long kicking and a very accurate kicking game.”
Berbizier can come across as a somewhat intense and even dour man, and is not given to wild public utterances, though he is much more complicated than that.
“We have French champions and European champions in our pool; that’s a privilege for us to have to play against the best,” has been his unassuming mantra this week. “That’s also a difficulty and another responsibility for our team. We wanted to play against the best teams, we are only customers. That means we have to be at the level of these teams.
“We are expecting a big match at a very high level. We are going to begin against the H Cup champions of 2009. For us that is a big occasion. Leinster have all the backline of the Irish team. They have shown they are competitive and they know how to prepare for the H Cup. I am expecting a match with a big physical intensity; that is the characteristic of the Irish game.
“I cannot say that we are going to win or we are going to lose, what is interesting for me is how we improve, because this kind of game is for us a big opportunity to improve. We don’t give our players real goals, but goals for our playing style.”
But their Italians prop Andreo lo Cicero was more upbeat. “This is not our apprenticeship, because we have a lot of international players. We are going to play our game, we are not going over there to watch them (Leinster), we are going there to try to win.”
While renovations were being completed at their home ground of Stade Yves du Manoir in Colombes, the old home of the French national team, Racing were obliged to play their first three games away. But then they won two of them, at Brive and Toulon, since when they’ve won four games at home and picked up bonus points away to Castres and Toulouse.
Also a tad ominously, last week Berbizier rested quite a few of their big guns, such as Chabal and Nallet away to a near full-strength Toulouse before their introduction almost inspired a remarkable win – only losing 28-23.
“It doesn’t matter who they bring,” says Schmidt, “but I have a feeling that they obviously rested players against Toulouse last weekend and they brought a few of them on towards the end of the game and almost swung it back, and they got a bonus point. Going to Toulouse and swinging a game around against Toulouse to almost get up and win it, those players fresh and rested a bit for this week will really be, as I said, formidable.”
Oui, Racing sont tres formidable encore.
Racing Metro 92
Nickname(s): The Sky and White, The Racingmen
Founded: 1890 (Racing Club) 2001 (merger)
Ground: Stade Olympique Yves-du-Manoir (Capacity: 14,000)
President: Jacky Lorenzetti.
Head Coach: Pierre Berbizier
Captain: Lionel Nallet
Honours:
– French championship
Champion: 1892, 1900, 1902, 1959, 1990
Finalist: 1893, 1912, 1920, 1950, 1957, 1987
– Challenge Yves du Manoir
Finalist: 1952
Champion under 15: 2005
– Coupe de l’Espérance
Champion : 1918
– Division One Group A2/Rugby Pro D2
Champion: 1998, 2009
