Rugby League in France

[saladguy]

I saw a similar thread to do with Russia so I wanted to post this about France as well. I'm new here so I have no idea if this is the right place or not.

Anyway I'm curious about how Rugby League is going in France and was wondering if there's anymore information about how the sport is currently going there in terms of juniors, publicity and other things.

The Russia thread had a post that said France has 16,000 something juniors whereas in 2004/05 it was said to be something like 6,000 and in 2011 around 10,000(https://web.archive.org/web/20110516053127/http://www.rleague.com/content/article.php?id=39435). I've also seen in the past year or two that junior French national teams have beaten England in junior matches. 

How quickly is Rugby League getting stronger in France?

[welshmagpie]

I’m sure Audois, Hvy Wg or a some of our other French based posters will be along to help you soon.

Just giving this a bump

[Man of Kent]

According to Gavin Willacy’s article in the December issue of Forty-20, the FFR XIII said there were 16,000 players in 2017, up a third from 12,000 in 2016. 

The same article also states there were 4,000 junior games played in 2016 and there are nearly 700 teams in total in France.

 

[barnyia]

The 700 teams must include all age groups, there are 24 under 19 teams in total, in open age there are 10 elite 1 teams, 11 elite 2 teams then I'd reckon around 30 lower level teams, 

 

[saladguy]

17 hours ago, Man of Kent said:

According to Gavin Willacy’s article in the December issue of Forty-20, the FFR XIII said there were 16,000 players in 2017, up a third from 12,000 in 2016. 

The same article also states there were 4,000 junior games played in 2016 and there are nearly 700 teams in total in France.

 

Oh so the 16,000 number was for 2017 and not 2018? Hopefully that means the number is even bigger now.

4,000 jump in one year is massive. Wonder what triggered that sort of quick growth.

I hope this is causing new junior teams to be made there.

[barnyia]

They only have leagues in the categories  under 15s , under 17s under 19s and open age, in under 13s they play around 6 games a year with thirteen players and the rest in 9 a side tournaments, the under 7s play 5 a side, under 9s 6 a side and under 11 s 7 a side,

the 4000 junior games must include the 6 or 7 matches each team plays in the tournaments which are around one a month or less.

im not putting french rl down its just not many people realize how small participation is in French rl.

in the under 19s comp Toulon are playing most games with 12 or 13 players max , as are albi and this is in the elite division, carcassonne have dropped down a division as they've only 18 players in total. 

 

 

 

 

[saladguy]

Speaking personally participation in France is much higher than I thought it was. 

So I assume the 16,000 includes the modified kids games? Was that a new thing in 2017? Might be one reason why there was a 4,000 jump.

[Lowdesert]

3 hours ago, saladguy said:

Speaking personally participation in France is much higher than I thought it was. 

So I assume the 16,000 includes the modified kids games? Was that a new thing in 2017? Might be one reason why there was a 4,000 jump.

Barnyia will know as he’s heavily involved.

The inclusion of the new team in Montpelier gives another boost to the game in the south and a closer link to Avignon who appear to be getting more involved.

It would good to get the Perpignan/Montpelier/Toulouse/Avignon universities involved.

[B rad]

23 hours ago, Man of Kent said:

According to Gavin Willacy’s article in the December issue of Forty-20, the FFR XIII said there were 16,000 players in 2017, up a third from 12,000 in 2016. 

The same article also states there were 4,000 junior games played in 2016 and there are nearly 700 teams in total in France.

 

Does anyone else think they are underachieving as a national side? 

[saladguy]

Yes and no.

We'll only see the benefits of the big jump in participation when the juniors playing now get to the national team. A lot of the players now probably came through when there were 5,000 juniors or less and rugby league was still banned(or recently unbanned) in schools.

But 5,000 juniors is better than some nations like Fiji and others that have made it to the semis in the World Cup regularly so there's some underachievement there. There should definitely be a jump in standards when all these kids get older(France won the u19 European title and beat England in under 16's last year).

The Montipellier news is amazing and is a hilarious coincidence soon after I made this thread and said hopefully they'll create more teams. I should make threads about French Rugby League more often, maybe other parts of the world as well. 

Next thread - "professional rugby league competition in America?"

[Keith989]

17 minutes ago, saladguy said:

Yes and no.

We'll only see the benefits of the big jump in participation when the juniors playing now get to the national team. A lot of the players now probably came through when there were 5,000 juniors or less and rugby league was still banned(or recently unbanned) in schools.

But 5,000 juniors is better than some nations like Fiji and others that have made it to the semis in the World Cup regularly so there's some underachievement there. There should definitely be a jump in standards when all these kids get older(France won the u19 European title and beat England in under 16's last year).

The Montipellier news is amazing and is a hilarious coincidence soon after I made this thread and said hopefully they'll create more teams. I should make threads about French Rugby League more often, maybe other parts of the world as well. 

Next thread - "professional rugby league competition in America?"

Hopefully we will see growth here in Ireland, there seems to be  more players converting to league from union recently and if we can get these players into the national team and have a balance between the heritage players and home base players, we could see a growth in the fan base.