Player strike breaks top French club

USAP Feminin have dominated French women’s rugby for over a decade. This is the team that of Marie-Alice Yahe, Aurelie Bailon, and Laetitia Salles. Last season every major French senior squad, 7s or 15s, featured players from USAP, including  Elodie Guiglion, Christelle Le Duff, Fanny Horta, Wendy Divoux, Julie Billes, Caroline Boujard and Christelle Chobet. The club fielded highly successful teams at all levels, with thriving development and junior squads.

But it was announced today that they have had to pull out of their opening game against Bobigny as they are unable to field a team – the first time a game in the top level of French women’s rugby has been forfeited for over four years.

The problems at Perpignan stem from the appointment of a new coaching team after the end of last season, lead by Sebastian Bozzi and Patrice Druais, replacing Henri Sagols, who has been the first team coach since 1995.

The reaction from the leading players was immediate and near unanimously negative. As Eliodie Guiglion said to local newspaperL’independent;“People arrived at the club this summer. They arrived overnight. We do not know them.”

Some players, including prop Laura Ménétrier and Swedish international Rebecca Kearney, left for other clubs and when training for the new season restarted in August twenty of the remaning first-team players simply refused to turn up, announcing that they woud not play until Sagols as reinstated.

The reaction of the club has been defiant. Its immediate response, as soon as protests were heard in July, was to stop the women’s section from being able to officially use the USA Perpignan title (so, even if a team could have been formed this weekend, it would, technically, have had no name and possibly would have been unable to play in club colours).

Negotiations have been few, and the two sides appear to be as far apart as they were in July. Bozzi offered Sagols a “consultancy role” before adding that “he has neither the ability nor the qualifications to lead today a Top 8 team”, comments that did little to calm the storm.

The players have remained unimpressed so at the start of this week Bozzi effectively laid down an ultimatum demanding “support for training structure of the first team and co-ordination with other teams” while demands for the return of Henri Sagols were not to be considered. Club chairman Roger Hoogland announced that a training session would take place on Tuesday and that he “hoped the players would join them”.

Few did. So with no players (or at least no players of an age or standard capable of competing in the Top 8), USAP announced that they would not be able to play this weekend, and were seeking to postpone next weekend’s game at St Orens. With an international training break this will give them another month to try to resolve the dispute.

At present prospects of that do not look good. Marine Hernandez spoke for all of the players involve when she toldL’independent"We have nothing against the staff proposed, but we want Henry to come back with a real role."

Elodie Guiglion also toldL’independentthat she was "upset, exasperated and angry about everything that has happened and everything that has been said." She now plans "to take a FFR license" that will allow it to prepare the Olympics Rio with the team of France to 7 without being attached to a club, while Christelle Le Duff  has said that "If Henry Sagols does not return to the club, I'm leaving. Without his return, we will not succeed."

What happens next remains to be seen, but the consequences for French rugby beyond the South-West could be significant. The junior teams may continue, but with no adult team playing at the top level to feed into it will impact of the development of young players. Meanwhile thirty or more leading players will suddenly have no club – and most will not have international contracts to fall back on. There are unlikely to be enough places in other clubs in the region to absorb them all.

And the elite French club league – reduced to eight clubs two years ago to concentrate talent - will also lose a quarter of its games, spreading the impact still further as teams find large holes in their fixture lists where games used to be.