What an end to the season for Stade Rochelais! The big European Cup for rugby players (while waiting for the Shield of Brennus?) and a possible rise to Pro B (Jeep Elite) from this Friday evening (8 p.m.) for basketball players. On condition of beating Mulhouse in the final second leg of the play-offs. Rupella won the first leg last Friday in Alsace (78-82). In the event of an equalization in Mulhouse, the two clubs will meet again on Sunday (5 p.m.) still at Gaston-Neveur for a good decisive.
While waiting for this perhaps historic evening, the president of Stade Rochelais basketball, and CEO of Léa Nature, Charles Kloboukoff entrusts his happiness and his ambitions to France Blue La Rochelle.
Budget up 25%
A year of presidency and already a possible accession, are you a satisfied boss?
It’s a yellow and black year indeed, we are overjoyed by this magnificent reward which crowns all the work done by the staff and volunteers of the Stade Rochelais. In rugby, all the partners who supported the project. And it’s true that for basketball, it’s a bit of a divine surprise because the season had started in difficulty with injured major players. And eventually the group came together and found incredible energy to knock everything down every team at every turn.
We praise the fervor of the public to Marcel-Deflandre. Is the atmosphere also magnificent in Gaston-Neveur?
Ah yes, it’s getting louder and louder. And it’s true that in the last matches, the room was hot, full of flags. It would take a room 2 to 3 times larger now, given the popular fervor and all the public who come to encourage the team. I think it gives them extra strength to win matches because it’s often at the knife end. The climb was clearly a goal within three years. She was rather expected for the following season, as we had renewed the group quite significantly. And finally, if it should happen this year, we are a stone’s throw from victory, the club is ready to assume it.
With a budget necessarily on the rise?
All the partners are behind the club. This is a budget up 25%, almost from 1.6 million to 2 million euros. These are also room layouts to meet federation standards, but we are ready. We are all working together with the directors and the shareholders on the project, with the members of the staff to prepare the club for this rise, if it should happen Friday to Sunday.
A room with 4,000 seats?
In the event of a rise, what can Stade Rochelais claim next season?
Listen, there, it’s true that we must already restructure the team, welcome a new coach. So a lot of work that is done by Aymeric Jeanneau, our general manager. Obviously, the objective will be maintenance in order to find a stable position in Pro B, with perhaps a group of entrepreneurs and with the support of local authorities, considering the creation of a room has been the subject of discussions for two years, but with the Covid, the project was a little frozen. A “sports and shows” room, because basketball will not be enough to amortize its cost.
The Betclic Elite (Pro A) is a medium-term objective?
To consider the Pro A in the medium term, you need a room with 4,000 seats. We need infrastructure qualities, a training ground and it’s a lot of things that we lack today since the Gaston-Neveur room, as you know, is shared with schoolchildren. And professionals don’t necessarily have a lot of training slots. So we are still tinkering a little bit and the more we go up in level, the closer we are going to get to the national level. And the more it will be necessary to become more professional and have extremely efficient tools, which is already the case in part with the pooling of the Apivia training center where basketball players have access on Mondays to go and share the structures with the rugby players. But we will still need tools a little more dedicated also to basketball in the future.
A climb could accelerate the realization of this complex?
It will certainly give a boost and probably enthusiasm to try to form this collective to carry the project, because it is a very structuring project for the CDA (Agglomeration Community of La Rochelle). It is also a very important project insofar as there are no more performance halls for more than 1,000 people with the coming disappearance of the exhibition center. So we know that there is a gap at this level. The market studies that had been done at the time by the town hall showed that there was not necessarily the potential for a hall. But we are in the process of proving the opposite. Athletes are showing that La Rochelle has its place at the highest level and that this will be true for sport, perhaps for another collective sport in the future, we hope, and also for other types events and hosting shows of all kinds, because there is a real need. We also feel that the public has been deprived of many things for two years, that they want to have fun. There is joy, we saw it the other time on the Old Port, but I think we will see it again on many other occasions. That’s all we want for the end of the season anyway.
The presidency of rugby?
A more personal question to finish, can we imagine you one day president of Stade Rochelais Rugby?
Listen you have a president who arrives at a form of coronation after having worked for many years surrounded by very competent people. So I take great pleasure, in quotation marks, in supporting with the major partners and with the other associates of Stade Rochelais who are precisely Stade Rochelais itself, but also Rhinos and Watson Patrimoine who have done a lot for the structuring of this club. . I don’t have the “availability” as a business manager to devote as much time as a real professional president can. It is thanks to our collective that we manage to support this club and encourage it. No, no, I’m staying in my place and I’m very happy to be here and to be associated as a member of the rugby supervisory board. There are people who do their job extremely well and it is up to us to prove that we are capable of doing just as well in basketball and keeping players who will transmit this state of mind, who have the humility and the values of the Rochelais stadium of surpassing oneself. That’s what they showed us in the last matches.