Can the French Play Footy?

It doesn’t seem to have had much publicity, but nonetheless, the International Aussie Rules Cup is on at the moment in Melbourne. The important thing from my French husband Maxime’s point of view is that it provides yet another excuse to hang out with his fellow frogs. Thus it was that last Sunday, we trekked up to Royal Park to watch France versus Britain. I was looking forward to a fierce fight fuelled by the traditional French-English rivalry. Last year, England beat France in the final of the Euro Aussie Rules Cup, so what with that and Waterloo, the French should have been keen for revenge.

We arrived a little late, and Maxime headed off in search of nourishment in the form of woodfired pizza (such are his priorities). It was almost quarter time when he returned.

‘Where’s France’s score?’ Maxime asked as he approached with the only slice of pizza which had survived the journey back from the pizza van.

‘Where’s France’s score’ effectively summed things up.

‘There isn’t one,’ I said. ‘But, I mean, they don’t stand a chance. The French players are all microcscopic.’

The Brits towered over the Frogs, easily outmarking them (not that the marking was great, I have to say), and brushing them off with relative ease. With the average French player being the size of Napoleon, the game was rapidly turning into another Waterloo. (Les Coqs versus the Bulldogs. Seriously, who would you predict to win a fight between dogs and chooks?)

Napoleon and Asterix take the field for France

‘The French seem hesitant,’ said Maxime.

I’d be hesitant too if I was 4 foot nothing and playing on a yeti.

‘Look, there’s Asterix!’ said Maxime next, spotting a small blond French player we’d met at the meet-and-greet the week before.

‘They don’t need Asterix, they need Obelix!’ I said. ‘Where’s the magic potion? Give the man some supplements!’

By the last quarter, France were yet to score a goal. Nevertheless, a crowd of perhaps 70 French watched the game through to the bitter end. Not that the French supporters provided much in the way of actual support. They were the most silent footy crowd I’d ever stood with, muttering the occasional ‘ah merde!’ or ‘ce n’est pas vrai’ or ‘Oh prostitute’. The only vocal member of the crowd was an Aussie bloke, who would periodically yell ‘man up, France!’ I’m not sure the French understood what this meant. At any rate, they certainly didn’t do it.

France's end. Which about sums it up.

The final score was 88 to 7, with France’s only goal kicked just before the final siren (which I missed it because I’d chosen that moment to go to the toilet. Maybe should have gone more often!)

Today there might be a chance for France to score a win. France takes on the Indonesia garudas, who were comprehensively squished by tiny Nauru (227-7) and Fiji (208-0). According to Wikipedia, a garuda is a ‘large mythical bird’. So there’s definitely hope for France – Indonesia are birds too. What’s more they don’t even exist. Allez, les Coqs!

Can a Frenchman Love Footy?

Honestly, sometimes I think we're still in France. My French husband Maxime tends to organise our social outings and they involve one (or preferably both) of the following elements:

1. Food

2. French people

But last night's food-and-French-people outing at least had an additional element to interest me - Aussie Rules!

It was the meet-and-greet with the French Aussie Rules team, over from France to contest the International Cup in Melbourne. Over 300 French expats were expected to come along, and maybe the police got wind of it, because the venue was flanked with booze buses. Maxime was even breath-tested on the way in (maybe they also caught wind of his form when it comes to wine). But the police were out of luck - Maxime hadn't had a drop (in fact, the police were keeping him from having some drops). Billy Brownless may have stubbies rolling around in his car (as he announced on Triple M's Rush Hour), but our car is, sadly, a dry area.

As we entered the venue, the French football team was busy giving a rendition of the Marseillaise. So in true footy spirit, I sang 'We Are the Boys From Old Fitzroy' (OK, it was really just to annoy Maxime by messing up his anthem). Then the players introduced themselves to the assembled French expat masses. (We learned that the players included one with the nickname of Asterix, which means the opposition will need to look out for rovers on supplements.) As I listened to the player introductions, I looked about me and noted from the banners that the French team had chosen the name of 'the Coqs' (roosters). A little foolhardy for a competition in Australia, I thought. At any rate, I'm not sure I'll be shouting 'up the Coqs!' when I see them play ...

Singing the Marseillaise

French footy was actually born in Maxime's home region of Alsace. Maxime didn't start it, of course. But he did come across the Alsatian footy team when we lived in France. He had been surfing the net to find information on the microscopic size of Aussie footballers' ... shorts. (Such are the things Maxime looks up on the net). Instead of short footy shorts, he found a footy team - the 'Strasbourg Kangourous', just up the road from us in Alsace, and started by one Marc Jund. Back in the 80s, a couple of games of Aussie Rules were televised in France, and Marc had seen them. Probably it was a slip-up - the network probably meant to show some weird European winter sport involving someone going down a slide in sub zero temperatures dressed in Lycra. Be that as it may, Marc had been hooked and decided to start his own Aussie Rules club. He sought help from the AFL, and received a couple of footies and the rules in English. Which no one spoke. So much for that then, you might think.

Not at all! The dogged Strasbourgeois kept up their club. They did their best trying to nut out the game, watching all the footy replays they could get their hands on. More than ten years later when Maxime and I visited the Strasbourg team, they still hadn't worked out how to bounce the ball. (And so I showed them. 'Ah!' they said, fascinated as though I'd just performed an arcane act.)

And so it was that footy gradually caught on in France despite considerable odds and the inability to drop punt. The reason it does survive in France and other countries in Europe is down to European footy players who are not so much footy mad as footy insane. Like a Czech tigers fan I ran into in Europe whose entire house is festooned in black and gold. 

Last night, I met a case in point: as the French footy meet-and-greet evening wound down, and les Coqs became les Coqs au vin, I was introduced to a tall Toulousien at the bar named Gregoire Patacq. I asked whether his club, the Toulouse Hawks, had had any support from the AFL (some rules in English, perhaps). No, seemed to be the answer.

'When Demetriou said the AFL wasn't interested in expanding the game, I was devastated,' said Gregoire. 'I'd had a hard week at work and then that. It was really tough.'

'Did he really say that?' I said. 'I seem to remember someone telling me the AFL were practically throwing money at the middle east in order to get them to take it up.'

Then I added a few sympathetic things about things not being fair even in Australia - about how poor old Tassie doesn't ever get an AFL team, for instance (despite actually wanting one).

'Well,' said Gregoire defiantly, 'we still have footy. And we're not giving it up!' 

And I understood that if any football authority ever tried prevent them from playing it, the French would be up on the barricades. The French are always so passionate about things. But who would have thought one of those 'things' would be footy? 

Fantastic.

The Frog and the Footy

One of the first things concerned Australian friends asked my French husband Maxime when we moved here was, 'What footy team are you going to barrack for?'

'Collingwood,' he said.

'Oh my God!' everyone cried (apart from certain tasteless individuals crowing in the background). 'Why?!'

'Well, everyone seems to hate Collingwood, so I thought it would be the way I could annoy the largest number of people,' said Maxime, looking very pleased with himself.

'Well, you've certainly succeeded,' I said. 'Don't expect me to go to any games with you. We're only going to see Essendon.'

'Oh, don't be mean!' said the friends.

'Look, if he'd picked the Bulldogs or something I wouldn't have minded. But Collingwood? I don't think so!' I said.

I've stood my ground and so far: Maxime has been to one Essendon game with me and two Carlton games with other friends. But he revenges himself upon me by following the results each week and making a special point of informing me when Essendon loses and by singing 'Good Old Collingwood Forever' whenever he feels like being irritating. Which is often. What's worse, our seven year-old Elise sings along with him because she says she feels sorry for 'poor Papa' because Mummy hates his team!

'He is not poor Papa, he is bloody annoying Papa,' I tell her, and Maxime laughs. (Yes, I know, I know, I'm a disgraceful parent.)

Maxime mostly behaves at games - claps at the right times and drinks his beer (although he has been known to drink cider instead. When he does that, I just explain to the people around us 'he's a Collingwood supporter'.) But Maxime doesn't touch the suspicious looking pies and has yet to learn how to yell at the umpire. He also complains the matches are too long.

'With all the getting to Melbourne, parking, finding your seats, the whole afternoon's gone,' he says. 'They have too many breaks.'

Maxime would probably think differently about the breaks if he ever had to play a full quarter of football himself, I tell him. And I have played footy myself - for Melbourne Uni women's team. I talk from time to time about playing again. But Maxime is against it.

'You'll get hurt,' he says.

'Yes,' I reply.

In my career, I averaged one broken bone a year. Of those, probably the broken nose was the easiest to cope with. Except when I sneezed (oh my God, that was a special sensation!). But I loved playing footy. Being from a nation of hypochondriacs, Maxime finds this lack of concern for one's health hard to fathom. But Maxime and his very French attitude to healthcare is the subject for another post ...

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