Namibia, France’s third opponent at this World Cup, is with South Africa the only African country to have its napkin ring in this major competition. What are the rest of the teams on the continent really worth?
When he arrived at Ouagadougou airport, Antoine Yaméogo needed a little help to gather his luggage. “I had five suitcases full!”smiles this rugby player at the Gennevilliers club (Hauts-de-Seine) and pillar of the Burkinabe selection. “Materials, equipment, balls, collected here and there from friends… Do you think there’s a Go Sport or a Decathlon here?” This city-based IT salesman is one of the rare Stallions players to come from France, and has taken on responsibilities at the Rugby Federation of Burkina Faso to develop his sport in his country. The project is huge: “We always play on football fields. We manage to add pieces of wood above the goals to make the ‘H’. It’s DIY”, he sighs. As a metaphor for the state of African rugby.
The tip of the iceberg is South Africa, the reigning world champion. Every four years, the average rugby fan rediscovers the existence of the Namibian team, the Blues’ opponent on Thursday September 21 at the Vélodrome stadium in Marseille. For the rest, apart from the episodic participations of Zimbabwe (in 1987) and Ivory Coast (in 1995) in the World Cup, it is the desert, or almost. “We clearly missed the train of professionalism”deplores Mohamed El Maatouk, national technical director (DTN) of Moroccan rugby. “I would even say that we lost 20 years. In the 1990s, Morocco regularly met good European teams, Georgia, Spain, Romania… Since the development of Rugby Africa [la confédération continentale] At At the beginning of the 2000s, we closed in on ourselves, which led to a drop in level, due to not being able to compete with the best.”
“The Court of Miracles”
Anyone who has participated directly or indirectly in national games in Africa will necessarily have an anecdote. Landscape: “We went to play in Cameroon on a pitch whose lines had been drawn with chalk”, smiles former Senegalese international Yogane Correa. Physical : “During a match in Zimbabwe, during a scuffle, spectators came to lend a hand to their players by jumping on the field”, continues the same. Painful: “Ah, this 18-hour bus journey on potholed roads between Ouagadougou and Niamey…”laughs Antoine Yamaéogo.
In the bloody genre, Thierry Barbe, former coach of Burkina Faso between 2017 and 2018, even thought he lost a player, who found himself temporarily quadriplegic after a shock during a match against Niger. “I’m not even telling you the state of the trauma emergency room at the Niamey hospital. Thirteen meters by thirteen, stretchers everywhere, to my left, a kid with one arm torn off, on the other, a small boy with an open fracture. The court of miracles… It was an impossible story for us to find a scanner. And I had to bring together friends so that we could chip in to pay for the operation.”
The oval ball is still struggling to win over on a continent where football is king. Locally, certain sports relegate it even lower in the hierarchy, such as wrestling in Senegal. Exceptions still exist. “I land in Madagascar, it’s 5 a.m., I catch a taxi to find a hotel in the city centerdescribes the former French international “Jeff” Tordo. And there, I see dozens of kids playing touch rugby [une variante sans contacts violents] on concrete. That’s how I discovered that rugby was the king sport in Madagascar… Just behind corruption, unfortunately”sighs the man who founded the humanitarian association Pachamama, which takes children out of poverty through rugby.
Few federations can count on public authorities to develop their sport. “The Burkinabé federation operates with a budget of 30,000 euros. Obviously, we don’t go very far with that”, sighs Antoine Yamaéogo. Private sponsors are a pipe dream once you descend below the Sahara. “It’s cultural.sighs Yogane Correa. Local businesses do not donate because they do not have confidence in the use of funds. The only sponsors are companies run by French people, like [le cimentier] Sococim in Senegal.” And these are not the subsidies of the international federation World Rugby which will change the situation: when each European nation receives 4.5 million euros per year, the African continent must share 2 million euros, as revealed by the Deutsche Welle. Almost forty.
Plans B and system D
You will not be surprised to learn that many African team players take time off to participate in international matches. As for the payment of match bonuses, this is often folklore. “We were paid in dollarsrecalls Mohamed Boughalem, former Moroccan international expatriate in France. ButThe managers refused to pay players who remained in the country as much as those who played abroad. Like, ‘with 30 dollars, you are the king of oil in Morocco’. You can imagine that we opposed it… and we ended up all being paid the same amount.” A few hundred kilometers further south, in Burkina Faso, Thierry Barbe remembers that match bonuses were used to buy shoes. “And football boots, too! Not even good quality. For lack of anything better.”
No money, no equipment, no pitch, no sponsor… and no match. The Burkina Faso team will thus spend 2023 and 2024 without an official match, and with the exception of two major training courses in Zimbabwe and in the country. Some local players find themselves idle. “They do not have access to a weight room, and cannot eat like a high-level athlete”, laments Antoine Yamaéogo. Very often, local championships are organized on a piecemeal basis. In Senegal, there are half a dozen clubs… for “a plot and a half”describes Cédric Paniagua, president of the Dakar club S’en fout le score until last year. “And this pitch is on the military base. So we sometimes find ourselves playing on sand, which is not without problems in terms of security. Imagine a pillar who buries his head in the sand during a scrum…”
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In eighteen months spent within the staff of the Algerian selection, the former French international François Gelez harbors the regret of “never having played a match in Algeria. Most of the gatherings took place in France, for obvious logistical reasons.” Which is not necessarily a guarantee of international level conditions, complains the Moroccan DTN Mohamed El Maatouk. “I am still ashamed of a tournament organized in Toulouse, where all we had to feed the players was couscous prepared by mothers… The guys slept on bunk beds.”
A glass ceiling that is difficult to break
The qualifying tournament for African teams for the World Cup thus took place… in Marseille. For Namibian second row Pieter-Jan van Lill, who is playing in the World Cup, this was excellent news: “We were sure that we would not fall into a trap, that the terrain would be the same for everyone.” For the brand new boss of Rugby Africa, it is a disavowal, “bad publicity for Africa, (…) a big mistake, which will not happen again”, he assures in an interview on RFI. During this tournament, the Algerian team caused a sensation, coming close to qualifying. “They have initiated an interesting strategy to take off very quicklyillustrates François Gelez. The championship was only created around ten years ago, so they drew on the pool of dual nationals to quickly build a competitive first team.” All it takes is a grandmother born on Algerian soil to have the right to wear the Lions jersey. Hence the presence of the Caminati brothers, well known to followers of the Top 14, in the white jersey. “And at the same time, they have invested a lot in training to develop the next generation.”
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However, the Algerian plan did not go off without a hitch. “By qualifying for the World Cup in France, we would have faced the Blues in Marseille, it would have been an incredible spotlight”, sighs the president of the federation, Sofiane Ben Hassen. The Algerian dream was shattered by Kenya in the semi-final of the African qualifying tournament. Because there is only one ticket for the 37 selections on the continent – excluding South Africa. “It’s far too little, plague Sofiane Ben Hassen. Why not expand to 24 countries [contre 20 actuellement, formule gravée dans le marbre depuis 1999] ? It would be a real World Cup. And don’t tell me that it would increase the differences in level: Ireland has stuck 80 points to Romania in the current formula.”
The memory of Ivorian winger Max Brito, who became quadriplegic after a shock during a match against Tonga during the 1995 World Cup, remains in everyone’s minds when discussing an expansion of the world elite to include lesser African teams. seasoned. “We need to have more seasoned players in the major championships”, points out the former number 8 of Albi, Yogane Correa. “Why not create, based on the model of what is done in Fiji, branches of professional clubs to directly train the best elements on site before sending them to France?”
In Senegal, this model already exists… for football, with clubs like Metz, which have directly invested in an academy locally. “And it works almost too wellpoints out Cédric Paniagua, former manager of the Dakar club S’en Fout le score. At the club, we had a gifted and fast winger, who ended up giving in to the lure of football.” Unless another form of oval ball, which requires fewer players, equipment and specific sizes, ends up establishing itself in Africa: rugby sevens with its 10-minute matches and its tournaments which do not exceed three days. Thierry Barbe agrees: “That’s luck for this continent.”