Kids' rugby: a learning experience (for me)

It was kind of the rain to hold off until the rugby was over.

The match, or matches since there were several going on, involved eight- and nine-year olds playing with all the commitment of professionals turning out for their countries. And if the weather was well-disposed towards them, so was I. That was down to the atmosphere created not just by the kids, but by the adults with them. They were supportive, encouraging, good-humoured. 

What a stark contrast that was to my experience when we were living in England and took our youngest son to play his first football match. Which turned out to be his last. The parents were screaming for their side to win, shouting at the referee, abusing the other side. Of course, there was no way they were going to tolerate the presence of a beginner on the pitch, as their furious screeching made clear. My son was taken off the pitch within minutes and never returned.

The parents at the rugby match behaved as though the aim was to take part, not necessarily to win. Winning was a bonus, not an essential. But then, that’s part of what makes rugby so much more attractive a game. 

Achille brushes off the defence as he drives for the try line

I was there to watch Achille, the son of our good friends Félicie and Yannick. When I’d previously seen him, he was still a baby, unable to crawl, let alone walk, far less run through a line of defending rugby players to score a try. Which he did while I was watching. And, even more impressive, he was as determined in defence as in attack, tackling players, taking them around the legs and falling himself as he brought them down. It was a remarkable sight.

Full commitment: Achille gets his man
Bringing down the ball carrier before he can get to the line

There wasn’t just him, of course. We also got to know the later additions, his brother Arsène and sister Diane. Three kids made the reunion livelier and, above all, still more joyful.

Now, names like Arsène or Félicie should have given you a clue that the reunion wasn’t taking place in England. No, it was another welcome benefit of our visit to Strasbourg, alongside the pleasure of introducing sixteen Spanish friends from Valencia to that excellent city of Eastern France, as I’ve described before. 

Rugby is still a minority interest in France, which remains much more focused on the round-ball type of football. But France is good at rugby. In the 2022 instalment of the main European championship, the Six Nations, it won a Grand Slam, which means it beat all the others (England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and Italy). 

Not that there’s any reason for fans to gloat (the French supporters), or be downhearted (all the others). Rugby’s all ups and down. That makes it more interesting to follow. One year’s defeats can be followed by another’s victories, just as this year’s disasters may be followed by next year’s triumphs. French domination won’t last for ever, since all the sides (well, bar Italy so far, but its day will come) have enjoyed good times that take them to the Championship, and bad times when they fall. The only rather galling constant in world rugby is the almost unbroken superiority of the Southern Hemisphere over the Northern, and of New Zealand’s extraordinary All Blacks within that hemisphere. 

In any case, it wasn’t just the rugby that made the visit to our friends enjoyable. I travelled to the match with Yannick, and that gave me the opportunity to catch up with him. I’m glad to say that he’s doing extremely well. Just three years ago, he decided to launch his own company with a couple of technical friends who’d come up with an innovative way to produce graphene, one of the key products in the high-tech field. Yannick took the leadership of the company, and it has boomed.

From a standing start, they’ve grown the company until it has thirteen employees and a growing list of clients. That growth is due above all to the quality of the product and the skill with which they’ve run the company. But they were helped by an extraordinary injection of public funds: €1.5 million, in fact.

“That’s amazing,” I told Yannick, “and the government provides that funding?”

“Yes, as part of its initiative to re-industrialise France and foster innovation.”

To me that seemed as amazing as it was impressive. France, like Britain, has lost much of its industrial base. Now it’s trying to rebuild it, but not by going back to the soul-destroying (not to mention body-destroying) and ecologically toxic heavy industries of the past. Instead, the country is helping the emergence of high-tech companies working on a newer, more intelligent from of industrial production. That won’t just stimulate the French economy, it’ll help place it in the forefront of key developments in the future. 

I suppose it’s obvious why I found that impressive. Why, though, did I find it amazing? That was down to the contrast with Britain. It has taken a radically different approach to its economic woes. Instead of using tax revenue to invest in cutting-edge industries, the UK government decided to borrow massive sums only to hand them out to the wealthiest in the form of tax cuts. 

This is all part of what’s referred to as the ‘trickle-down’ effect in economics. The idea is that the rich get more money, they spend it, and that creates jobs and stimulates the economy. The truth is that the wealthy save a higher proportion of their income than the poor do, or can, and often they save it in offshore tax havens where it does little or no good back home. Even what they spend is likely to be on a second or third home, rather than an investment in industry, and a lot of the spending goes overseas anyway (it seems a luxury villa in the Caymans is a must-have accessory for those with tax-dodging investments there).

Yannick and his colleagues came up with a smart idea, and the French government is helping them realise it. Both sides gain. And the approach leaves Britain, the front-runner in the original industrial revolution, wallowing in its wake.

A bit like the rugby, to tell the truth. It was invented in England, specifically at Rugby school. This year France beat England 25-13.

Well, as I said, in rugby everything comes around and goes around. England will be back someday. One or other of the European teams will knock France off its perch. 

When it comes to the economy, though, things don’t look as encouraging. Britain is going down entirely the wrong road. Any likelihood of emulating its neighbour across the Channel seems remote indeed. 

Yannick will, I hope, continue to enjoy impressive success with his company. As I hope his family continues to bloom, both on and off the sports field. And maybe at some stage Britain can admit its mistakes, change direction, and start to cultivate similar success for itself.

In the meantime, I’m pleased to have attended a rugby match that taught me so much. Not all of it by any means about rugby.