“Combatantes”, a documentary comic retraces the winding journey of women to practice their sport freely

They are “fighters”. These “fighters”, these are the women who fought, in France and elsewhere in the world, for the right to practice a sport, and moreover the one they loved: rugby. This story is told in the documentary comic Fighters. Rugby, a women’s story (Ed. Actes sud, €23 in bookstores) by author Isabelle Collombat and illustrator Sophie Bouxom.

Between them, in a very educational text, but sometimes too brief, combined with drawings made with talent, they retrace the lineage of these “fighters“, including the French team women’s rugby, currently involved in the World Cup, is the heir. DSince the 1920s, these pioneers have fought to be able to practice this sport in decent conditions, form teams and organize competitions.

From the first barette match in 1922, the ancestor of rugby, to obtaining the status of high-level sportswomen in 2001, through the integration of women’s rugby within the French Rugby Federation (FFR) in 1989 , the road has been long. These women who worked for its development, of which several portraits are to be discovered as you read, gradually had to free themselves from the prejudices of patriarchal society and male domination.

If today women can freely indulge in this sport, this freedom did not exist in the 1970s, when women rugby players were banned from this practice, judged by men “too dangerous” and “not feminine enough”. We even learn that the Secretary of State to the Prime Minister for Youth, Sports and Leisure at the time, Marceau Crespin, declared: “I think that rugby, a contact sport requiring qualities of endurance, fundamental robustness and virility, is contraindicated for young girls and women for psychologically obvious reasons… Also, I ask you [lettre adressée aux préfets] not to help them, let alone patronize women’s rugby teams.”

So, sportswomen defy the ban and opt for resourcefulness in order to continue playing illegally. System D also concerns the financial aspect, since the clubs did not receive any subsidies for the women’s sector at the time. They must therefore find funding on their own to pay for licenses, equipment and travel. So much so that rugby costs them more than it brings them back. Whatever, the desire is there and their perseverance will earn the respect of their male counterparts and the enthusiasm of society in order to create the first women’s Rugby World Cup, in 1991 (four years after the men), and begin a professionalization.

The book, which hooks the reader from the first pages, is full of anecdotes. Like the one where we learn that in 1982, the date of the birth of the French women’s team, the Blue jerseys do not display the rooster, the tricolor emblem, yet clearly visible on that of the men. It was not until the end of the 1990s that the famous symbol officially appeared on their tunic.