Badge of Dishonour

[ParraEelsNRL]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/f ... 307043.stm

French rugby league fights for rights

Even today the sport is still marginalised


By Hugh Schofield
Vichy


If you've ever been to Vichy, you'll know how hard it is to spot the landmarks of the wartime era.

Understandably perhaps, there are no signs up saying: "Come and visit the home of France's disgrace. Gestapo headquarters - this way."


The centre of the town is in fact of extraordinary 19th Century elegance - the Emperor Napoleon III wanted Europe's royalty to make Vichy and its spa an annual fixture. So it's all shady promenades, bandstands, and a glassed-in sanatorium for the taking of the waters.

But if you want to see the hotel where Marshal Petain ran his collaborationist government - or where the various ministries and foreign embassies were - then you need a good guide.

The legacy of World War II has passed into history now - only people in their 70s or older will actually remember when their town was the seat of government - but I had come to Vichy to explore one curious footnote from that time.

Young upstart

Because it was in December 1941 - in his office overlooking the park - that Philippe Petain signed an order prepared for him by the ministry of sport... banning rugby league.


Part of the infamous banning decree
Why - you might ask - would a government troubled enough with haggling with the Nazi occupier, registering Jews, and promoting its catholic-nationalist revolution, bother suppressing a game enjoyed by tens of thousands of young men?

The story is a complicated one, and one which has repercussions down to this day.

In the 1930s French rugby league - or rugby a treize (rugby for 13) - was rugby union's upstart younger cousin.

It arrived in France as late as 1934 - half a century after the 15-man game - but in the five years before the start of World War II, it advanced so quickly as to pose a real challenge to the supremacy of rugby union.

Rugby union was in steep decline. The national team was banned from the Five Nations tournament because of violence on the pitch, and the number of clubs was falling every year.

Lobbying

Rugby league was taking up the slack, and as sports papers from the time show, there was a groundswell of enthusiasm for the game - culminating in 1939 when the national side went to St Helens and became the first French team - in any sport - to beat England on their home ground.


By the outbreak of war there were 225 league clubs in France - all set up in just five years.

Rugby league was a professional game - players signed annual contracts with their clubs and had control over their careers.

It was seen as a modern, innovative sport - and was closely associated with the left-wing Popular Front government that came to power in France in 1936.

This was already enough to damn it in the eyes of the Petain government, but what modern research has shown is that the decision to actually prohibit the sport was the result of lobbying from powerful figures within rugby union close to the Vichy regime.

This year a French government inquiry found that "influential officials in the French Rugby Federation endeavoured to eliminate the competitor, which they claimed was a deviant form of rugby union."

Blacklist

So the ban came in. Rugby league's assets were seized, grounds were taken over, players were invited to repent.

Those who didn't were blacklisted.

Of course all this would be just a fascinating historical anecdote were it not for the fact that - acording to many rugby league enthusiasts - the effects of the ban are still being felt today.

After the war rugby a treize was unbanned - but in the spirit of deliberate amnesia, no-one wanted to explore too closely what had happened.

The result was that the game never received full recognition and indeed right up until 10 years ago it was actually forbidden to call itself rugby at all. Officially it was the jeu a treize - the game for 13.

The sport never got its assets back, and it's still impossible for anyone studying to become a state sports instructor to take rugby league as their option.

Some clubs find it hard to get access to playing fields.

No compensation

And the state of the sport in general?

Marginalised.

Today 20,000 people play it, compared with the quarter of a million who play rugby union.

The national side is no longer seen as a serious international competitor, and an attempt to get a French club into the British-based superleague collapsed.

And so to today - when after years in which the sport's governing body preferred not to rock the boat - a new generation of supporters is emerging that wants the truth to be told.

They know financial compensation is unlikely.

But they want government help for the sport, and above all an official apology... for that signature 61 years ago, in a hotel overlooking the park.

[Raiderdave]

And AFL supporters think RL and AFL have a rivalry, no way, RL and RU despise each other all over the world and have done since 1895.

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/s ... ioncode=26

It is a fair bet that the man who will present the trophy on October 20, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, is unconcerned. It is not as if he could do anything about the International Rugby Board's choice of name for its trophy. He does, though, have power over another rugby memory lapse - this time, more a suppressed than an invented memory.

Among the official documents inherited by his Government was a report commissioned by Marie-George Buffet - who ran against Sarkozy as a Communist presidential hopeful this year - in her former role as Minister of Sport and Youth. This looked back at sport, in particular rugby league, under the collaborationist wartime Vichy regime.

Rugby league was suppressed by a decree of December 19, 1941 prepared by Jean Borotra, a former tennis champion who was then Sports Minister, and signed by Marshal Pétain, the Vichy head of state. Borotra had the upper-class elitist's abomination of all professional sports, but rugby league was singled out for special treatment. It had grown rapidly from its arrival in France in 1934, and by the outbreak of war it rivalled rugby union in the number of affiliated clubs and the size of crowds.

Suppression was based on a report by rugby union journalist Paul Voivenel, who argued that rugby league counted as un métier (a job) rather than un jeu (a game), even if players were not being paid! This was in keeping with the attitude union had taken to the rival code since the schism of 1895, treating it as a seceding province rather than a separate game and thereby denying its legitimacy. That French rugby union's own take on the game's amateur ideology was so idiosyncratic that it had been suspended from international competition after 1931 was not seen as relevant.

The decree was enforced vigorously by Borotra's deputy and eventual successor, the rugby international Jep Pascot. The Rugby League Federation was dissolved and its assets seized.

Rugby league was able to resume after the liberation of France, but there was no post-war reckoning. While it enjoyed a purple patch in the 1950s with a brilliant generation of players led by Robert Puig-Aubert - who, while denied the right to play league in 1944, helped Pascot's club Perpignan to a national union championship - it has never really recovered.

The bank accounts and physical assets of the French Rugby League Federation were never restored, and it was many years before it regained the right to use the word "rugby", having instead to call itself Jeu à Treize . The Catalans Dragons' run to this year's Challenge Cup final was French league's finest hour in half a century.

Far from suffering for its complicity in collaboration, rugby union was adopted by a state run by men whose reputation was based on their record as resisters. President Charles de Gaulle, influenced in part by the enthusiasm of his close adviser Jacques Chaban-Delmas, never held meetings that clashed with international matches. The national championship final is a semi-state occasion, with the President presenting the trophy.

Quite what restitution might be offered to the Treizistes so long after the war is unclear. The report, though, was eagerly awaited - for its symbolic value as much as anything. An apology would not go amiss. The wait, though, will go on. Sarkozy, evidently unimpressed by immediate predecessor Jacques Chirac's penchant for offering apologies for past wrongs done by the French state - and in particular under Vichy - has said he intends to look ahead rather than back.

His Minister of Sport and Youth will be Bernard Laporte, once he has concluded his unfinished business as coach of the French national team in the World Cup. Unless Laporte has an unexpected shock in store for his former employers, it seems as though rugby union's remembrances - magnetic or otherwise - will remain defective.

Huw Richards is visiting researcher at the International Centre for Sport History and Culture, De Montfort University, and author of A Game for Hooligans: The History of Rugby Union , to be published in November by Mainstream.

Rugby Union .. a sport that colaborated with murderers of Women & Children
shameful beyond words

[ParraEelsNRL]

You're not wrong RD, and plenty of Union fans love the fact their code done this to mungoball.

[ParraEelsNRL]

I've got this book, has plenty of info from the late 1800's when union arrived right up to the early 2000's.

[NSWAFL]

Rubgy codes fighting amongst themselves.

I LOVE IT!!!!!!!!

[cos789]

Seems RL and AR have had similar histories when it came to establishing each code (RL in France and AR in NSW).

i wouldn't agree with that.

I'm interested to know, who denied the NSWFL access to grounds in Sydney? Rugby League or Rugby Union or both? Anyone know the answer to that?

That is easy. rl only broke away in 1908. The NSWFL was formed in 1903 and the NSWFA much earlier than that.
RU had all the power coming from imperial England. It took a while for rl to achieve popular power and indeed there was no animosty towards AR (from what I can gather). Note the suggestion to amalgamate AR and rl. Also it was common for players to play AR when young and move onto rl when the'y'd filled out and of course Dally Messenger is welll known for doing this.

[Raiderdave]

Rubgy codes fighting amongst themselves.

I LOVE IT!!!!!!!!

the war ended in 1909 in Aust.... we won & we've never looked back
& toffballers have never gotten ova it

they despise us with an unrivalled passion
&
we laugh at them in return..............

[NSWAFL]

And yet look who's winning the battle in Melbourne between the Storm and the Rebels.......

And how competitive is the Union World Cup compared to the League?

[Raiderdave]

And yet look who's winning the battle in Melbourne between the Storm and the Rebels.......

And how competitive is the Union World Cup compared to the League?

the Rebels are 1 year old , lets see how they're going in a few more years

& who didn't know NZ wouldn't win the RWC
no one

who thought NZ would win the RL world cup

same answer ............

[NSWAFL]

Difference is Australia were dominant beyond belief in the RL.

NZ were known as chokers in the RU and it was a much closer battle.

"Derp!"

[cos789]

Rubgy codes fighting amongst themselves.

I LOVE IT!!!!!!!!

the war ended in 1909 in Aust

Come on. Don't be so a pathetic liar.
There's interest in the RUWC as against no interest in rl slongfest.

[cooee]

And yet look who's winning the battle in Melbourne between the Storm and the Rebels.......

And how competitive is the Union World Cup compared to the League?

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sport/ ... 6208452503

STILL on bleak city, the Melbourne Rebels obviously have an international identity crisis after Barbarians coach Graham Henry referred to them as Melbourne Storm.

Henry, who oversaw the Barbarians in their 60-11 thumping by the Wallabies on the weekend, was forced to defend the performance of five-eighth Danny Cipriani.

He said Cipriani had not played since June and "needs to be judged on what he does over the next season with the Melbourne Storm".

[NSWAFL]

One person ers. So what?

[Raiderdave]

Difference is Australia were dominant beyond belief in the RL.

NZ were known as chokers in the RU and it was a much closer battle.

"Derp!"

so a team given no chance to win a game .. wins
but a side given no chance of losing .... wins

& the latter is a closer game





F wit 's are embarrased by that

[Raiderdave]

One person ers. So what?

Hes the All Blacks Coach

knows the Storm

he's never heard of the Rebels ................