Although Carcassonne winning yet more domestic honours this season may give the impression that the major French competitions are a one-horse race, the truth is quite different.
AFTER winning the Coupe de France Lord Derby in April, Carcassonne won this season’s Elite 1 Championship on 26th May, for the thirteenth time in their history, as underlined the local newspaper L’Indépendant with an inspired title “For the XIIIth times….”.
By now, especially if you have been following French rugby league for the two last decades, you may have a feeling of déjà vu.
You may ask yourself where’s the surprise in this news? And you could easily draw the following conclusion: Carcassonne smash everyone and they are standing alone at the top of the domestic hill, a spot vacated by Catalans Dragons (previously UTC) when they joined Super League. I will leave aside Toulouse Olympique for the moment as they seem to be in a media purgatory, playing in a competition very difficult to sell to French sport journalists, barely followed by local media (and the Toulouse ones only) and not at all by the national ones, despite their now televised home games on Vià Occitanie.
I would never deny that Carcassonne are a great club, with a long history of successes, and has so many assets to bring someday to the Betfred Championship or Super League; it has a base of fans, is located in a very strategic city (world-renowned as hosting a UNESCO site, with a nearby airport offering already direct flights to Manchester and London). ASC XIII is also supported by local politicians and authorities, and let’s say, and I won’t go further, that the political context there is more ‘neutral’ than in Perpignan, for example.
But Carcassonne today is only the tip of a moving and shape-shifting French rugby league iceberg.
Let’s go back to Elite 1; yes, Carcassonne won (again) but against who and how? They played Albi, another ambitious club located in a city of a similar profile as Carcassonne. And they won by a small margin (8-6) in a game that could have gone either way. Carcassonne had lost the championship last season against Limoux, so were relieved to get the title again. My point is not to minimise Carcassonne’s achievement, but to convince you, readers of RLW, that Elite 1 is never a foregone conclusion. The invasion of the pitch by the overjoyed Carcassonne fans after the final whistle tells a lot about a Treiziste community which is not jaded at all. As excited as if it was the first time.
But you could find that same joy on some other pitches. The victory of the communicative Villefranche XIII in Elite 2 (37-14 against Villegailhenc Aragon RL) and their likely promotion does bring an interesting perspective to the Elite 1, with the return of an area, Aveyron; a touristic area, yes, with Millau Viaduct, but what may surprise some Anglophone readers, also a Département built on coal as there were several mines there (among others Decazeville which closed in 2001, and which was the place of impressive miners strikes in the 60s).
The first weekend of June (called literally “A Spring of rugby league” by the FFR XIII) brought also a lot of joy to Treizistes. Many Grand Finals were scheduled, on purpose, on the same day, with even a ‘quadruple header’ at Tonneins with four women’s Grand Finals played; Déesses Catalanes winning the highest title. Ille-sur-Têt hosted a triple-header, the men’s Nationale Grand Final (with a notable exception: Saint Gaudens hosted the Nationale 1 Grand Final).
I’m not going to give you the list of all the results but here are the dominant trends.
As expected, Aude (chief town Carcassonne) was the most represented area in the Grand Finals but very closely followed by Tarn (chief town Albi), whereas Catalans (Pyrénées Orientales) only came third.
Aude and Tarn are equal when it comes to the number of titles won after that weekend.
All three French southern regions were represented in the Grand Finals, in contradiction of the traditional Parisian bureaucratic vison of a fantasy and rural rugby à XIII only played in Aude and in the Catalan country.
South west of France (Nouvelle Aquitaine) was the most represented region in the senior women’s grand finals (with even the victory of XIII Gascon, located at Faugerolles, not far from Agen). A kind of come back for Aquitaine.
Later in June, it was the turn of a wheelchair rugby league festival with two Grand Finals held in Cabestany (with there again, an exception, the development grand final was played a week before at Le Lude, in the west of France and it was won by Décines, Greater Lyon against no less than Nantes!). It was also a Catalan festival as two teams of the Catalans Dragons were represented in Elite 1 and Elite 2. The Elite 1 final being televised on Vià Occitanie. Both Catalan selections won the title in their categories; the Challenge Cup holders (with 61-year-old Gilles Clausells on the pitch) defeated Montauban (South West) 36-22.
Nevertheless, there is undoubtedly a new deal in this 21st century; Tarn is gradually becoming a power in the domestic championships. If Carcassonne someday leave the French Federation to compete in the Betfred Championship or Super League, no doubt Albi and Tarn will dominate the French landscape and could even dream of sending a team, in turn, into the Franco-British competitions. Nowadays, Avignon is no more mentioned here as possible applicant to a British championship.
When it comes to media, it’s interesting to see that both Carcassonne and Albi are active on the social networks. It’s too soon to regard this as a competition, but there’s a slight difference; Carcassonne seem to have deserted X/Twitter, which is a strange thing and a strange message to send to the media community. Albi seems more interested in communicating abroad, even thinking of having their games televised and called in English (see Treiziste Diary in RLW 495) wheras Carcassonne seem to rely more on their local fame and to be indifferent to the national and foreign media. Just an educated guess from an outsider, of course! Scores and scorers are also announced in Occitan at Albert Domec Stadium. Albi RL’s nickname is now ‘Tigers’ and not ‘Tigres’ in French. It tells also a lot about a certain difference of style between the communications of the two. But both have a solid base of fans and families to support them.
So, yes, this season, Carcassonne won the championship ‘again’!
But this Treiziste Audois tree that has deep roots, hides a more complex forest where there is an intense activity.
French Treizistes know that activity, they contribute to it daily. British RL fans may know it as well. Australian RL fans (except of course our esteemed friend Mike Simpson) probably less and Australian stakeholders, hypnotised by the lights of Las Vegas, probably not.
But the real task ahead is definitively to convince millions of my compatriots that French rugby league is not all about one or two holiday destinations they may visit in the summer.
First published in Rugby League World magazine, Issue 498 (July 2024)
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