Although not directly involved in the World Cup on the Thursday we undertook an event of some significance for Sale fans when we had dinner with the President of the Montpellier Supporters Club, her husband and some Montpellier fans. Florence is without doubt the Anne Blakeney of MHRC and as we subsequently found out is very well connected at the club. We got to know these lovely people very well during our many visits to Montpellier and those of us visiting there in January for the ECC will be made very welcome in an attractive town. In the attached photo I have both my hands on Florence’s shoulders and her husband is at the right hand side of the back row. He speaks good English but Florence speaks almost none and Mrs Pronters good-ish French was put to the test at her end of the table.

Dinner with Montpellier Supporters Club – Thursday 13th October.

The next day we were off to Lyon again but this time to get the tgv from Lyon to Paris for the crucial England group game against South Africa. For a train lover like me I had been looking forward to this for a while and the tgv did not disappoint. Travelling on the top deck of a train travelling at 300kph is a great way to get to Paris and is to be strongly recommended if you get the chance. This turned out to be the highlight of the day as the undoubted low point of the whole trip was sitting through England’s dire performance at the Stade de France. At the end of this game I had seen England twice at this stadium and they had scored 3 points and the opposition 67! Merde.

We were happy enough BEFORE the Springboks group match.

The next day saw the return tgv trip on the way back to Lyon and we dropped in to see the All Blacks put on a ton against Portugal but again the minnows never gave up and bought the house down with a well taken try. The end of a very tiring eight days saw us back in Montpellier on the Sunday for the Pacific Islands battle between Tonga and Samoa. Another match that never quite lived up to its billing but Tonga deservedly won despite being down to 13 men for the last ten minutes or so. Elvis did not catch the eye in a rather disappointing Samoan team. Those critics of the “Bloody Great Drum” should have joined us for this game. We were three rows in front of one of the regional French bands that were at all RWC games. I am not particularly musical but even I know the unique thing about these bands is that no two instruments play in the same key but they make up for this by playing extremely loud, with great frequency and great enthusiasm. They create a great atmosphere when you are sat some distance away but the eardrums certainly take a bashing when you are sat so near.

The band is bl**dy noisy at this distance.

We had seen 8 games in 8 days and had travelled nearly 2000 miles, most of it by road, and we were absolutely knackered. We always knew this would be the hardest part of the trip but we all wanted to do it and now we had a week off with no games and this is where a villa with a pool in southern France comes into its own.

Four of us set off for a couple of days in the Perpignan region as we had never been there before and stayed overnight at a splendid hotel in the Corbieres region serving great food and not surprisingly excellent local wine. In this hotel in the middle of nowhere there were a group of Kiwis over for RWC and perhaps more unbelievably Mike Loines from our group knew one of them quite well. A few more relaxing days loafing around and sightseeing in the beautiful nearby towns of Avignon, Arles and Nimes re-charged the batteries ready for the next episode. On the Thursday of this week one of those things that makes rugby such a great sport took place in Uzes. Through a rather complicated set of communications the referee in our group, Mike Docherty, had made contact with the local club and had arranged to officiate in a friendly against a touring side from Montana. It was an evening kick off and we turned up at the nicely appointed local ground. Uzes play in a regional SW France league and tend to feed their better players upward to Nimes and further onward to Montpellier. Our own Sebastien Bruuuuuno hails from this region and was well known at the club and conversations were also held concerning national cult hero Sebastien Chabal. It was a most enjoyable game which was well officiated by our man and both sides played to a decent standard. The touring side had some pretty good players and won a free flowing game 30 something 20 something. From my perspective it was nice to get back to grass roots amateur rugby which I do far too little of. I escorted the rather chilly ladies back to the villa but Mike stayed on and became engaged in an international sing-song involving some rather bawdy numbers and when he was invited to sing an English ditty he could only muster “Swing Low”. This resulted in the 3 Uzes catering ladies inviting him “to stick your ******* chariot up your @rse”. This showed a considerably better grasp of the English language than had been apparent earlier in the evening.

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