Stade Français Paris

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Stade Français
Full name	Stade Français Club Athlétique des Sports Généraux Paris
Founded	1995
Union	Fédération Française de Rugby
Location	Paris, France
Ground	Stade Jean-Bouin
Capacity	12,000[1]
President	Max Guazzini
Coach	Fabien Galthié
League	Top 14
2005-06	2nd
Home colours		Away colours
Official Website
www.stade.fr

Stade Français CASG (usually known as just Stade Français) are a French professional rugby union club based in the 16th arrondissement of Paris. The club plays in the Top 14 domestic league in France and are one of the most successful French clubs of the modern era.

The club took part in the first ever French championship final of 1892, and went onto win numerous titles during the early 1900s. The club spent about 50 years in the lower divisions of French rugby, until entrepreneur Max Guazzini took over in 1992, overseeing a rise to prominence, which saw them return to the elite division in just five seasons, and capture four French championships in 7 years.

Stade Français were founded in 1883 and currently play their home matches at Stade Jean-Bouin,^[2] though they have recently had a relationship with the 80,000 Stade de France, taking two matches there in 2005-06 season and two more in the 2006-07 season. The club was founded in its current form in 1995 with the merger of the rugby sections of the Stade Français and Club Athlétique des Sports Généraux (CASG).

Contents 1 History 2 Name, logo and colours 3 Stadium 4 Support 5 Image 6 Rivalries 7 Honours 8 Players 8.1 Current squad 8.2 Former 9 Coaches 10 References 11 External links

[edit] History

Main article: History of Stade Français Paris

The Stade Français club were established in 1883 by a group of students in Paris. The club contested the first ever domestic championship final in 1892, against local Parisian club, Racing Club de France. The game was played in Paris and refereed by Pierre de Coubertin.^[3] Stade Français lost the match 3 points to 4. However the club were able to make up for the loss the next season when the two teams met again in the final, with Stade Français winning 7 points to 3. The team quickly became a powerful side in the competition, featuring in every championship in succession until 1899, successful in 1894, 1895, 1897 and 1898.

From 1899 through to the 1908 season Stade Français would contest the championship final on six occasions against Bordelais, winning in 1901 and again in 1908. Stade Français also defeated SOE Toulouse in the 1903 season in Toulouse. Following a vast amount of success during the early years of the domestic league, after 1908 Stade Français would not make another final appearance until the 1927 season, when they were defeated by Toulouse 19 points to 9 in Toulouse. Stade Français would then go onto spend over fifty years in the lower divisions of French rugby.

Whilst in the third division of the French leagues, entrepreneur Max Guazzini took over the club in 1992 with the dream of bringing back top class rugby to the city of Paris. Stade Français CASG was born in 1995 through the merger of the existing Stade Français club and another Parisian side, Club Athlétique des Sports Généraux (CASG). The team returned to the top division in 1995 which coincided with the appointment of head coach Bernard Laporte. By 1998 the team had reached the championship final, and captured their first title since 1908, defeating Perpignan 34 points to 7 at Stade de France. Laporte left the club to coach the national team, he was replaced by George Coste who was in turn replaced by John Connolly in 2000.

Connolly took the club to their first Heineken Cup final in May of 2001, where they were defeated by the Leicester Tigers 34 points to 30 at Parc des Princes.^[4] Connolly left in 2002 and was replaced by South African Nick Mallet. Stade Français won the domestic league again in both 2003 and 2004. During the 2004-05 season Stade Français went close to winning both the French league and the Heineken Cup, but lost both finals; beaten by Biarritz domestically and by Toulouse in the European Heineken Cup after extra time in Scotland. Mallett soon returned home to South Africa and former Stade Français player and national captain Fabien Galthie was appointed head coach.

[edit] Name, logo and colours

In the 1880s, many emerging sports clubs were modelled after English institutions and took on English names (Racing Club, Standard, Sporting, Daring etc.). The name Stade was chosen by the young students as a reminder of Ancient Greece, for the Stadium (Stade) was where the athletes performed their feats. Français came later. Ironically, it was probably given by British players, against whom the Stadistes played early on, to differentiate them from their own Paris associations as rugby was very much an expatriates' game in the late 1880s. In those years, France also lived with the memory of the war lost to Germany in 1871. The patriotic appeal of la revanche (the revenge) is probably behind the choice of the blue, white and red colours of the French national flag, and of the name Stade Français (written with a lower-case "f" in french: Stade français). Blue and red are also the colours of the city of Paris, which has been providing a lot of support since 1994 (the Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë is a loyal supporter).

Royal blue (of a fairly darker hue in the last seasons) is the main colour, used for the jersey, while the shorts are red and the stockings white. The logo sports the club’s three colours, blue, white and red. The white letters S and F (the club’s initials) are painted on a red-blue shield. The twelve blue stars represent the twelve championship wins.

President Guazzini wanted to create identifiable jerseys. He first decided to include three flashes of lighting, which are now the club’s emblem, and to have a new shirt every year. In 2005, Guazzini went further and chose to shock the ’’macho’’ world of rugby by introducing a pink away jersey, pink being one of the rarest colours used by sports teams. Guazzini explained that he had been attracted to the pink away jersey used by Italian football giants Juventus in their centenary season and wanted to use it for his team.

Stade Français played their first match in the new colours at Perpignan in September 2005 and lost (12-16). They then used it regularly. On April 15, 2006, SF played at Toulouse and asked permission to don their pink jersey. The referee refused because, he said, pink would clash with Toulouse’s red.

The club sold 20,000 pink replica jerseys in 2005-06. Guazzini also had more than 10,000 pink flags manufactured, which were scattered on the seats at the Stade de France for the two games against Toulouse and Biarritz. Two new jerseys were introduced at the beginning of the 2006-07 season. A pink one, designed by fashion designer Kenzo, was used for Stade’s home debut against Montpellier on August 19, 2006. A new navy blue one was used for the second home game against Bayonne on Sept. 9, 2006, and has raised questions as it is dotted with big pink fleur-de-lys, green flashes and green numbers in the back (green is not a club colour). It had been officially presented to the players a few minutes before the game and received by them with cheers and claps. Only wing Christophe Dominici had been allowed to see it beforehand. The radio-controlled car used to bring the tee to the kicker was painted in pink for the 2006-2007 season.

[edit] Stadium

The team's home stadium is Stade Jean-Bouin which has a capacity of 12,000. Guazzini made a decision to take a European quarter final match against Newcastle to the significantly larger Parc des Princes, which is litteraly across the street from Stade Jean-Bouin. The move was greeted somewhat anxiously by the fans and players, most likely due to superstitions regarding the 2001 loss to Leicester. Guazzini ensured that the 48,000 stadium was full, selling cheap tickets, and targeting school and junior clubs. Jonny Wilkinson even made an appearance at Town Hall, though he actually did not end up playing.

Guazzini wanted to book Parc des Princes for the two biggest games of the following season; Leicester and Toulouse. However this could not happen due to the possibility of "pitch damage".^[5] Although Parc was not available, the national stadium of France, the 80,000 Stade de France was. Guazzini gambled and booked it for the Toulouse match. The gamble paid off, with 79,502 officially turning up for the game, smashing the regular season attendance record - for any football code in France. At the end of the match, Guazzini announced that he had booked the venue for the Biarritz match - a rematch of the 2004-05 final. Stade Français drew an even larger crowd to the game (79,604), toppling the previous record set that same season.

The Leicester match however, could not be played at Stade de France due to fixture clashes. Numerous football clubs offered to host the match, as well as Brussels offering their national stadium. After a period of much speculation, the match was taken to the Stade de Charlety, remaining in Paris. On Oct. 14, 2006, the record was broken for the third time in a row (79,619) for a championship tie against Biarritz. Stade Français will play the Heineken Cup showdown with the Sale Sharks at Parc des Princes in December 2006.

[edit] Support

The club currently holds the record for the highest crowd at a regular season match in any football code in France, a record they broke twice during the 2005-06 season, and once again in 2006-07. After Guazzini took over the club in 1992, there was an extreme lack of support for the team in Paris, due obviously to the club spending half a century in the lower divisions of the French league system. After the team returned to the elite division in 1997, it still took a while to re-establish rugby in the city. In 1996-97, Guazzini offered free access for some home games as Stade Français played in the Second Division, very much to the dislike of other local clubs, and managed to attract gates over 7,000 for games against such minnows as Valence d'Agen and FC Lourdes.

Later women were allowed to come to the game for free. He said: "I prefer to make 7,000 people happy at our ground, than play in front of 200 paying guests who willl bring in only a fistful of francs. The Paris area accounts for 20% of rugby players in our country, our grounds should not be empty.".^[6] The team now has a high percentage of women in attendance at games.^[7]

Despite finding early success in the French championship in the late 1990s, the club did not have huge support, especially at away matches. Following the clubs two extra-time losses in the Heineken Cup and Top 14 finals, the crowds increased significantly. They had now really started to pull in the Parisian fans. Most games are now sold out (10,000 or so). A young peoples' supporters group - Le Virage des Dieux (The God's Terrace), brought drums and introduced a singing atmosphere to home games, which had traditionally been known to be quieter than other fans. There has also been an increase in away support, though this still remains hard, as the nearest away match is at Clermont Ferrand, which is 265 miles away.

[edit] Image

Max Guazzini, a media man, wanted to develop the club as a modern business and use marketing methods. He never hesitates when it comes to promoting his club and creating a buzz. As a result, the club has been attracting an equal number of cheers and criticisms. The first objective was to offer a nice show to people who would then become regular paying fans. Guazzini also introduced female cheerleaders,^[8] music before kick-off, the sound of bells to mark the end of each half (instead of a more traditional siren), fireworks at the end of evening matches and a radio-controlled car to bring the tee to the kicker when he takes a penalty or a conversion kick.

His successful radio station NRJ (he founded it in 1981) was a generous sponsor too. His contacts in show business allowed him to bring superstars Madonna and Naomi Campbell to some games, making them the official club's “godmothers”.^[9]The club's official anthem was Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive", long before France used it as theirs in the 1998 FIFA World Cup.

In 2001, Guazzini initiated a calendar called Dieux du Stade, i.e. The Gods of Stade (Français), a play on the word stade which also means stadium. In French, The Gods of the Stadium is a metaphor for athletes in general, especially those who perform in athletics.^[10] It includes black and white pictures of the team’s players, naked, adopting postures of athletes of the Greco-Roman Antiquity and hiding their private parts. A new one has been made every year since, with guest stars on several occasions, such as Frédéric Michalak and Olivier Magne in 2003. Profits partly go to charities. A DVD covering the making of the 2004 and 2005 editions was also released. All have been extremely successful with women and in the gay community. The 2006-07 edition has raised controversy over the pictures, which have been deemed more explicit than in previous years.

Guazzini’s latest moves include renting the Parc des Princes and the Stade de France for big games, and using pink jerseys. Stade Français are heavily criticized by old-timers, especially in France's rugby bastions in the south, for their innovative spirit which tends to hurt traditional image and values of rugby such as humility and seriousness. Some people are wary of the club’s relation to the world of media and show business (players are regularly invited as TV show guests). The critiques can also be explained by the historic Paris vs provinces divide and some form of acrimony in the rest of the country for everything that comes from the capital. Others consider it is good for rugby in its quest to maintain itself as France's second most popular sport after football (soccer) and shed its image as a gross rural southwestern form of fistfight.

[edit] Rivalries

Paris was the cradle of French rugby. Stade Français and Racing Club de France, two Paris-based outfits, actually played the first ever club match in France in May 1891, won by Stade 3-0, and were the only two clubs to take part in the first ever championship the following year. In fact, the first seven championships were fought exclusively between Parisian teams. Though they played Olympique de Paris in two finals, Stade’s main foe became Racing Club de France whom they came up against in the first two finals, in playoff matches in the following years, as well as in several Championnat de Paris matches.^[11] Racing was a more aristocratic club and Stade a more popular one.

Another rivalry, with Stade Bordelais, took its place, when clubs from outside Paris were finally allowed to play in 1899. The teams were going to meet in 7 of the next 10 finals, with Bordeaux winning 5 of them. Yet the most heated one was the first Stade won in 1901. Bordeaux won the match 3-0 on a hotly debated try. Afterwards, Stade accused Bordeaux of fielding three uneligible players: earlier in the year, Stade Bordelais had merged with Bordeaux Université Club to become Stade Bordelais Université Club, but three of those new players had not been with the club for at least three months as the rules dictated. USFSA, the body which ruled over organized sports, ordered a replay, but Bordeaux claimed their honour and honesty were at stake and refused it. Stade Français were declared the winners and this was how their sixth title was won.

Bordeaux had to wait three years to get their revenge in one of the dirtiest finals, in which the whistle was held by a very quiet and blasé Englishman, Billy Williams (who, four years later was to get the English RFU to buy some land for Twickenham Stadium). Kicks in the shins succeeded blows in the face. Spectators joined in and booed the kickers in a very poor and sad match. A reporter appalled at what he saw commented : "I’ve never seen thug fights in the seediest parts of town, but that is probably what it looks like.”^[12] Bordeaux won the next three finals, all against Stade. The rivalry was enhanced by the huge number of France players on the pitch. When France battled New Zealand for its first ever international match in 1906, it had 5 Stade Français and 4 Stade Bordelais players, the highest tallies for any club. The First World war put an end to the rivalry as neither of the two Stades regained their past glory.

Today, Stade Français has no local rival. The Paris versus province rhetoric is alive and kicking so that wherever Stade goes, it is met with traditional jeers people in the province throw at Parisians. Since its 1990s revival, its traditional foes have thus been all clubs not playing in Paris.

Naturally the fight for the top spots means that the most significant rivalries are with the other Top 14 big guns, Toulouse and Biarritz Olympique. Stade Français has been seen as the rising threat by the all powerful Toulousains who had won four consecutive titles (1994-97), before Paris won the next one. The clubs alternated for four years, winning two titles each until 2001, though they never met in the final. When they finally did, Stade Français walked all over Toulouse for an easy victory (32-18) in 2003. Toulouse got their revenge in 2005, when they won a tight Heineken Cup final in overtime (18-12 a.e.t.) at Murrayfield. The clubs often fight it out in the press, but there have never been any real tensions on the pitch, largely because many players have been playing together for France. Regular season games are rarely spectacular. In Oct. 2005, Toulouse was the guest for the first ever regular season match at the Stade de France, but coach Guy Novès chose to leave key regular starters at home, so the Stade Français 29-15 victory was maybe not as significant.^[13]

Stade Français games against Biarritz are another notable rivalry. The Red and White established themselves as another powerhouse in 2002 when they won the title, their first since 1939. Stade’s Heineken Cup semi-final victory in April 2005 probably did a lot to create tension between the two clubs, as Christophe Dominici scored the winning try after nine minutes of injury time at the Parc des Princes. Biarritz felt it had been done an injustice. A month later, the two clubs fought it out in the Top 14 final, which went down as the most physical and the most tense ever. Biarritz’s overtime victory in the highest scoring final ever (37-34) crowned a final on the “edge”.

Five months later, the two met again in Biarritz in a regular season match. A massive fistfight, in which almost all players were involved broke out after just 5 minutes, after a scrum went up and the first rows exploded. The referee handed two yellows and two reds to Stade’s Arnaud Marchois and BO’s Imanol Harinordoquy.^[14] The rest was extremely rough, full of scuffles and insults. Stade went on to win 14-7. As can be expected, everyone condemned the other camp after the match. Biarritz coach Patrice Lagisquet assured Paris had assaulted his players to destabilize them, while the Parisians acknowledged that the overtime loss in the Top 14 final had been hard to swallow, especially as they had the impression that Biarritz had overemphasized the physical side. Ever since, the matches between the two teams have been relatively quiet, with only the journalists to pump up the hoopla beforehand.

[edit] Honours

• French championship
  • Champions: 1893, 1894, 1895, 1897, 1898, 1901, 1905, 1908, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2004
  • Runners-up: 1896, 1899, 1904, 1905, 1906, 1907, 1927, 2005

• Heineken Cup
  • Runners-up: 2000-01, 2004-05

• Coupe de France
  • Champions: 1999
  • Runners-up: 1998

• Coupe de l'Espérance
  • Runners-up: 1916

[edit] Players

See also: Category:Stade Français footballers

[edit] Current squad

Nat. Position Player HK Mathieu Blin HK Benjamin Kayser HK Dimitri Szarzewski PR Pieter de Villiers PR Sylvain Marconnet PR Yohan Montès PR Rodrigo Roncero LK David Auradou LK Antoine Burban LK Boela du Plooy LK Mike James LK Arnaud Marchois LK Rémy Martin FL Mauro Bergamasco FL Raphaël Jechoux FL Pierre Rabadan N8 Sergio Parisse

Nat. Position Player N8 Shaun Sowerby SH Alexandre Albouy SH Jérôme Fillol SH Agustín Pichot FH Lionel Beauxis FH David Skrela CE Denis Dallan CE Stéphane Glas CE Thibault Lacroix CE Brian Liebenberg CE Geoffroy Messina CE Mirco Bergamasco WG Julien Arias WG Christophe Dominici WG Julien Saubade WG Lucas Borges FB Ignacio Corleto FB Juan Martín Hernández FB Nicolas Jeanjean

[edit] Former

Fabien Galthié Franck Comba Diego Dominguez Olivier Roumat Christophe Juillet Marc Lièvremont Thomas Lombard Vincent Moscato Serge Simon

Philippe Gimbert Christophe Moni Brian Lima Benoît August Olivier Brouzet Fabrice Landreau Richard Pool-Jones Jean-Baptiste Lafond Denis Charvet

[edit] Coaches

See also: Category:Stade Français coaches

Season(s)	Name	Nat.
1995-1999	Bernard Laporte
1999-2000	Georges Coste
2000-2002	John Connolly
2002-2004	Nick Mallett
2004 -	Fabien Galthié & Fabrice Landreau

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Official site (French)
• Overview on itsrugby.co.uk
• Official website of the Ligue Nationale de Rugby (French)
• Stade Français Paris on ercrugby.com