Former rugby player Aristide Barraud, a witness to the typhoon in Japan, worries about the climate change and the state of the XV of France, in the chronicle he holds for "The World" over the competition.
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" Oval Rising ". So far so good, but French rugby does not learn from ecological mistakes. He treads his fatal fate on that of the planet, survives in the eye of the storm, and storms multiply. This time, the typhoon has arrived from the South Seas and gives us some respite but, in recent years, the rugby warming has taken a few degrees. The predictions of the specialists are however old but the French rugby remains sealed by the intestine wars. Other nations are gaining height, our mercury, however, continues to climb.
The solutions are known, but the short-term economic and financial wills take precedence over the need for reform, reinvention, the anticipation and protection needs of both players and our training.
We knew the risks to not change course, we panicked recently because the drama is palpable.
To welcome the typhoon, I returned to Kyoto, ancient imperial city, city of beautiful ecological promises. This weekend, it rained as much as in two months, while my departure from France, the leaves of chestnut trees grilled on the tree. The agreements of 1997 quickly flouted, classified in the cabinet of the necessary but forgotten turns.
We knew the risks to not change course, we panicked recently because the drama is palpable. Rugby has become an important branch of the entertainment industry, and the human, at the base of this sport, which has become a threatened species, is evaporating like an ice floe in the sun.
So far, so good
So far everything was fine, but in recent months, the announced consequences are visible to all. The cast of the XV of France, the boredom of the public and the media anger slip in a monotonous current where young shoots fall out of autumn.
School life, the public and collective vision of rugby has become that of a dangerous sport that forms as much as it spoils. We talk about it in dinners, it's become fashionable, and from the outside the fear is palpable. It takes its anchor in the elite championships. The business of mass layoffs, bigwigs come to bask the blazon under a crushing sun. The reforms are impeccably diverted and the players at obsolescence programmed s'esquintent before their thirty years.
It would be terrible if the victories of the French team under 20 years, double world champion in title, are a mirage. Like these harsh but sporadic winters, used by skeptics to refute the general climate. The delay is important, it will take time, the changes will be in the shadows. For the moment, rugby games still attract the lights, but those courts or headings miscellaneous. So far so good, but watch out for the winter.