Rugger Girls: Part 10

1980s: ADMINISTRATIVE STRATEGIES

Tenth chapter of the summary of the history of women's rugby in France, from the book "Rugger Girls"("Des Filles en Ovalie"), written by Jacques B. Corti and Yaneth Pinilla Foreword by Serge Betsen. Published weekly(ish) by French women's rugby blog Des Filles en Ovalie.

In the mid-1980s the French league was composed of four regional pools:

• North/Ile de France, with Chartres, Soisy, Chilly, Tourcoing, Stains, Villeneuve-la-Garenne.
• Centre/South West, with : La Teste, Tulle, Romagnat, Montluçon, Tours, Niort.
• South East/ Bourgogne/ Lyonnais, with : Bourg, Le Creusot, Chatenoy-Le-Royal, Ecully, Rillieux, Tournus.
• South, with : Bézier, Saint-Laurent-de-la-Salanque, Carqueiranne, Toulouse, Narbonne, Villefranche-de-Lauragais, Port-la-Nouvelle.

What all these developments it needs to be remembered women's rugby was so organised that from the spring of 1984 it does not have a break. That year, from August 5 to 13, a training camp takes place at Gruissan, so even in the summer the girls had live rugby! After a scorching summer of rugby, official activity accelerated. In 1985, Wanda Noury was elected Vice-Chair of the Steering Committee, responsible for the North. Claude Izoard worked with the sports commission, Marie-Celine Bernard and Jackie Leterre dealt with licensing  and discipline, and Viviane Berodia was elected to the secretariat.

This was also the moment that the Ministry of Education and the FFR took further action recognising women in rugby. An official three-day course, organised at INSEP (the French National Sports Institute), by Michel Debet and Jean-Claude Bacqué, on "Problems of teaching rugby in schools and liaising with the clubs" is delivered by two lecturers, one of whom was Marie-Celine Bernard.

Extract from the book "Des Filles en Ovalie", Editions Atlantica (2005), Written by Jacques Corte / Yaneth Pinilla B. Foreword by Serge Betsen.