barnyia

https://viaoccitanie.tv/ The link to the channel, hopefully it'll work in the UK, 2pm kick off in England, 3pm France

Lambert Belmas goes well. Some of the HM are out of position and out of form. Some deserve the honourable mention.

The money goes to the federation to plan and govern the game There is no prize money in french rl, you play all year to win a piece of wood or a cup,

Referees paid and the privilege to play in elite 1. Then you still have to pay fines for yellow and red cards, fines if supporters don't behave, fines for not having a doctor on site, fines for not having the right security, etc etc

The fee for elite 2 is 5000 I think, plus players of elite 1 level need paying more,

It's 20000 per team so yes there's a fee, plus a fee for your u19s team of 1 or 2 thousand, don't forget there's 0 prize money in France for any division

Live on via occitanie and sport en France with the Toulouse game just afterwards on via occitanie,( all Toulouse home games are on via occitanie now)

Hope so. Really would love to see Lézignan get the win

Yes it's worrying, when you see the Catalans have 40 players in the u19s, Lézignan played with 13 players this weekend, limoux 14 players, Villeneuve, Carcassonne, Albi and pia have all played at least one game with just 13 players on the team sheet (u19s) st Gaudens 19s play 9s and Avignon 19s forfeited 2 games this season, Toulouse elite team turned up with 16 players as they dropped their u19s first teamers down to the juniors, Worrying times, I know the numbers in u17s is slightly higher than last year, the federation used to let 3 u20 players on the team sheet of the u19s but that's been stopped this year,

With around 4 to 5000 actual players in all of France, including all players male and female from 5 years old to adults, shows the coaching is not too bad!

1700 licences around the Perpignan region, so almost a quarter of all licences,

Yes there's a couple of teams near Lyon, and maybe 2 or 3 in northern France (Nantes and Paris I think)

The 76000 on the podium is rugby union,

5900 licences in the full region of occitanie, it says that's 78% of all licences in France so really around 7000 licences in the whole of France, but licences doesn't mean players, it includes coaches, presidents, fitness coaches, kids and kids coaches, We're even put down as a comparison to other regional sports like bull running and tambourine tennis! It's amazing how the French manage to get so many good players, considering playing numbers, especially being competitive up to u19s against the English,

Carcassonne are already in the cup final and will not play Albi until the final in the championship, Albi can still finish top if they beat Pia and Carcassonne lose to Villeneuve, teams finishing top seem to always lose in the final

No Carcassonne will get to both finals this year.

Carcassonne will have played in 7 out of the last 7 finals that have been played, lord derby and play offs.

Thanks.

The final is the 27th April at Brutus, should be a decent game.

Rugby union is top 14 with 14 teams

Limoux play albi this weekend in a re arranged game, pia play Carcassonne and Avignon play Villeneuve,

Elite 2 winners have been told they have to move up to'elite 1, they want to get 13 teams in elite 1 or they're just going to call it top 13 with 11 teams in there

Yes they it was chosen before, but there's only Avignon from over that way in elite, Nolan plays 9. I'm not sure for Vincent, there's a.good chance he was in the academy, an excellent centre, the stand out.yoing player so far is Clement Martin,

Both semi finals to be played Sunday 7th April in Marseille, a small one stand stadium that was used for tye France U17 v England lions in 2022, 4/5 hours drive one way for Carcassonne, Lézignan and Catalan and a shortish trip for Avignon, so I'm not expecting much support at the ground for the 3 Occitanie teams.

Close games except for Carcassonne.