2023-09-06 16:00:19
The XV of France welcomed to its base camp in the Bois-Préau park, in Rueil-Malmaison, on September 2, 2023. LIONEL URMAN / PANORAMIC / BESTIMAGE
Motivated
Are you ready ? Because they obviously are. For many months, the players and the staff of the French rugby team have been preparing to compete in this World Cup at home, motivated by the desire to finally win this trophy, which until then has remained inaccessible to the XV of France. Selection, training, tours, test matches, injuries, controversies… The intense preparation of the French finally ended in beauty, Saturday, September 2, in Rueil-Malmaison (Hauts-de-Seine), with a ceremony that cannot be more symbolic.
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capped
If rugby does not always live up to the values it proudly claims, we cannot blame it for denying its traditions. Thus, the rugby selections continue, on the eve of each World Cup, to indulge in the ritual of the cap delivery, born in the 19th century in England. It consists in materializing the selection of a player by giving him a funny cap, or rather a « cap » similar to that traditionally present in the uniform of English schoolchildren. This is also why we say of a selected player that he is “tired”.
Unbuttoned
That day, in their base camp in Bois-Préau park and in front of nearly 5,000 supporters, the French players were also able to demonstrate their difficulty in fully wearing the costume. Note that two players, as well as a member of the tricolor staff, had given up buttoning their shirts up to the collar, displaying a loose tie. Laziness ? Neck too muscular to tolerate full buttoning? Or a subtle nod to the sulphurous dancer Louis Pécour, instigator, in the 17th century, of this loose tie trend? We will ask them.
scruffy
In the same vein, note that the player Louis Bielle-Biarrey had chosen to wear his
loose tie with jacket left wide open and shirt pulled out of pants. Such an accumulation of stylistic choices obviously leaves no room for doubt. The young Bordeaux winger from Bègles refines his third half look here. And how to blame him?
contrasting
Finally, let’s take advantage of this group photo to continue our relentless fight against one
of the greatest stylistic scourges of the time. Concretely, the four French rugby players in the image, visibly cheated by the equipment supplier of the XV of France, wear here their navy suit with a pair of white sneakers, giving them all the characteristic air
of the boss of a three-wheeled scooter advertising agency desperately trying to look young and creative… Failed. Precisely the opposite is happening. Go Blues anyway.
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