From a windswept hillside in the Pyrénées watching the European U19 Championship, Pierre Carcau reflects on why the future of rugby league depends on giving emerging nations the chance to compete.

EVERY four years, I surrender to the football World Cup. As a Frenchman, I cannot help it. The spectacle, the narratives, the improbable heroes — it is the greatest show on earth. Though I must confess, rugby league has ruined my patience for 90 minutes that somehow last two hours. Because of a game invented in Huddersfield, I am conditioned to expect a match in which the clock stops when play stops. But the World Cup gets me anyway.

This summer, I watched Curaçao lose 7-1 to Germany. Nobody suggested Curaçao should be banned. Nobody argued that the scoreline was “bad for the game”. Curaçao will play again. They will measure the gap, learn and return. A new nation has been converted to football for good. That is how sport works — or, at least, how it should work.

Yet, even as the football World Cup unfolded, a familiar bitterness crept in. A sweet poison. Because in rugby league, we refuse to accept this logic. We reject unbalanced fixtures. We shield emerging nations from heavy defeats as if humiliation were worse than irrelevance. So the small nations never play. They never measure the gap and they never grow.

That is why what happened this July in the Pyrénées quietly mattered.

The European U19 Championship at Font-Romeu was, objectively, a minor event. There was no live coverage on Sky Sports, no front-page features in L’Équipe and no analysis from the NRL headquarters in Sydney. But the French federation streamed the entire competition on YouTube. The opening match between France and Scotland kicked off at the same time as St Helens versus TO XIII in Super League. One fixture had TV coverage and thousands in the stands. The other had barely two hundred people watching at Font-Romeu and was streamed to whoever cared to look. I watched on a screen. But even on a small screen, it felt serious. This was real competition.

Font-Romeu sits at 1,850 metres in the Catalonian Pyrénées. The CREPS is a high-performance centre where many of France’s sporting teams train to benefit from the altitude. This is not a backwater pitch hastily booked for a youth festival. It was built for seriousness.

Nevertheless, the presentation told a different story. A press conference was held at the end of June to introduce the tournament. It lasted barely twenty minutes. No major local elected officials attended. No one whose presence might have signalled that this mattered beyond the inner circle. It was what we call in France a “service minimum”: a duty discharged, not a vision communicated. Even the organisers treated their own event as a box to tick rather than a moment to seize.

Who led the effort on the pitch? Rémi Casty, assisted by Tony Gigot. Two former Catalans Dragons and Chanticleers stalwarts, now building the next generation on home soil. Not sending them to the Southern Hemisphere to fight for scraps. Bringing them here to altitude. Their presence signalled an intent: that Rugby à XIII could be properly developed on French ground.

Today, for a young French player aspiring to the highest level, there is only one apparent path: abandon their home, their culture and seek adventure in Australia. Those who take that route deserve respect. They are remarkably brave. They throw themselves into a sink-or-swim environment where the margin for error is vanishingly small. They cross the world rather than sit at home and blame institutions.

And the challenge isn’t only cultural — it’s historical. In Oceania, the rich history of French rugby league appears forgotten. When a young French player arrives in Australia, they carry the weight of ignorance. Not only must they prove they can play, but also that a French player can play. Laurent Garnier, a well-known coach based in Australia, once told me he had to work twice as hard simply to demonstrate that he belonged because being French meant starting from zero. Not from a legacy, not from a reputation, but from suspicion.

Admiration for their courage should not blind us to the real question: why must they be this brave? Why is choosing to stay and develop at home effectively settling for less?

The absence of mainstream media was not an oversight — it was a choice. French sports journalism preferred manufactured drama: personalities on the brink of conflict, credited with supernatural abilities. Young Europeans grinding away in anonymity, in a sport they chose rather than inherited, did not fit. So they did not exist in the eyes of a media industry that confuses noise with significance.

France opened their campaign against Scotland. They won 96-6. Sixteen tries, four from Leny Stacul (Saint-Estève XIII Catalan). Two hundred spectators watched from the hillside. The Scottish number ten was sent off after an altercation. This was not a polished showcase. It was real. It was competition.

Two days later, France faced Serbia. The final score: 106-6. I was on the hillside. The wind was strong that afternoon, gusting across the exposed pitch at 1,850 metres. Serbia, despite benefiting from some Australian-based heritage players from the Illawarra Steelers and West Brisbane Panthers, collapsed just as quickly as Scotland had. By the second half, the match had ceased to be competitive. You could hear every hit, every tackle and almost the voice of the referee.

Compare this to France. Rémi Casty’s squad was drawn entirely from the French domestic pyramid — Super XIII clubs and Élite 2. Every single player was developed on French soil, in French clubs, through French coaching. No imports. No heritage shortcuts. No passports of convenience. Just homegrown talent, representing the communities that shaped them. That is not nostalgia. That is architecture.

In contrast to the commercial sideshows staged at venues like Campbelltown Sports Stadium in Sydney’s outskirts — where “international” events feature heritage-player teams paraded before crowds buying meat pies, sausage rolls and cold VB at inflated prices — Font-Romeu offered a different vision. Entry was free. One concession stand, quickly overwhelmed, sold no alcohol. Another served Catalan sausages. This was not commerce. It was French hospitality. There were no grandstands there. No paid seating. Just the mountain, the pitch and people watching together. And in the air, Anglophone voices carried louder than French ones — British and Canadian supporters were more vocal. French spectators were there too, but the Anglophones made the noise.

On the final Saturday, France met England — the ultimate test. The scoreboard read 48-12 to Les Bleuets. Five hundred spectators, according to L’Indépendant, including myself, saw Zak Bennet (Halton) score England’s first try after just ten seconds. Ten minutes later, Giordano Descalzi (Saint-Estève XIII Catalan), regarded as the tournament’s “serial scorer”, struck for France. By half-time, Descalzi had already scored three tries. After the break, Tom Zitter (Carcassonne) completed a brace. Ilan Boualem (Albi) scored on the hour mark. Charly Martinez (Lézignan) sealed it with the eighth try. Two English players suffered concussions — proof of the physical intensity imposed by Rémi Casty’s men.

Casty spoke of “respecting the opponent until the end”, refusing to relive the disappointments of the last two editions, when France had missed out. Gary Hewer’s England side struggled to keep the ball under pressure. On the slope, the applause was sustained. A French youth tournament finished not with a whimper, but with a statement.

The European U19 Championship represented one of the last genuine attempts to establish a regular calendar for our sport. Standing on that slope in the Pyrénées, I found a piece of my enthusiasm returned. The past few years had tested it, stripped it bare by an irregular international calendar. But this tournament reminded me why I care.

After all, the cameras weren’t rolling when Rémi Casty first laced his boots as a kid, or when he played his first match in Australia: a Frenchman starting from zero, like all those before him. That didn’t stop him. It won’t stop them either.

Rugby league, at its core, belongs to those who play it, not to those who sell it. Sometimes, the most important matches are the ones nobody watched — but everyone remembers.

Treiziste Diary is an opinion column written in a personal capacity and is © Pierre Carcau

First published in Rugby League World magazine, Issue 523 (August 2026)