XV of France: “banal brawl” or “racist attack”? Story of the evening at the heart of the Chalureau affair

2023-09-13 19:49:57

It’s a story that began with drinking on a Thursday evening, and ended with violence in the early hours of a Friday morning. A news item in the middle of the street in Toulouse, “something unfortunately banal” as a judicial source summarizes it. An act of violence with unclear circumstances, which became embedded in the landscape of the French XV a few hours after Paul Willemse’s withdrawal from the Rugby World Cup and the formalization of his replacement on the second line in the list of 33: Bastien Chalureau. Or the alleged perpetrator of a racist attack in early 2020, sentenced to six months in prison the same year before appealing.