JAMES HARRINGTON
FRENCH COLUMN
Promoted ProD2 winners Vannes will kick off their first-ever season in the Top 14 at home against 23-time French champions Toulouse on the evening of Sunday, September 8, to round out the opening weekend of the 2024/25 campaign.
Earlier the same day, La Rochelle will host Toulon at Stade Marcel Deflandre, as the French rugby schedule skirts around the final weekend of the 2024 Paralympic Games in Paris.
The day before, Bayonne and Perpignan get the season under way in the early afternoon kick-off at Stade Jean Dauger, while in the evening, losing Top 14 finalists Bordeaux host Stade Francais, the side they beat in last season’s semi-finals at the Matmut Atlantique.
Clermont entertain Pau, Castres face Racing 92, and Montpellier take on Lyon in the other matches on the opening weekend of the new season.
Vannes’ Top 14 debut, at the 11,865-capacity Stade de la Rabine, a ground with a truly astonishing approach in which fans pass through a remarkable 18th-century facade not far from the port, is guaranteed to be a sell-out.
The club’s president, Olivier Cloarec, had to issue a public apology this week after the club’s website crashed under the virtual weight of 50,000 people trying to sign up for a season ticket for the 2024/25 campaign. Bear in mind that Vannes has a population of 54,420 people, according to the 2021 census. Nearly one in five of them attended ProD2 matches last season, as the club averaged home gates of over 10,000.
You can get a reliable rugby shop experience through the attached link if you’re looking to get your kit ahead of the 2024/25 season.
It looks a lot like the 13 Top 14 home matches will be sell-outs this season – especially if the squad gets off to a decent start.
The club has halted the sale of ‘abonnements’ after passing the 9,000 threshold, so that it can sell nearly 3,000 tickets on match days throughout the season. Good luck getting hold of one – comments referencing rocking horse droppings and poultry dentistry seem to be apt at this point.
The fairytale of Vannes – a club founded in 1950 – is well known. They are the first side from Brittany, the first from northwest France, to make it to the top tier of the domestic senior men’s game. They are the little side that could, from well outside the game’s traditional heartlands.
Their head coach Jean-Noel Spitzer, 50, has been in charge since retiring as a club player in 2005, when they were in the amateur Federale 2 league. They were promoted to Federale 1 at the end of his first season in charge.
Eleven seasons later, they won promotion to the ProD2. Eight seasons after that, and at the fourth time of play-off asking, they have climbed into the Top 14.
Who’s to say he can’t keep them there? They’re a properly ProD2-hardened side these days, and look to have used the additional recruitment time – not to mention temporarily relaxed JIFF rules – that French rugby allows to promoted sides smartly.
Prop Mako Vunipola is arguably the statement signing, joining from Saracens, while brother Billy heads to Montpellier – they could face off against one another when the two sides meet at the GGL on the weekend of October 12.
They have also picked up Filipo Nakosi, from Castres; Francis Saili, below, and Kitione Kamikamica, from Racing 92; Tani Vili, from Bordeaux; Salesi Rayasi, from Hurricanes; Western Forces’ Santiago Medrano; and Chile’s Inaki Ayarza, from Soyaux Angouleme.
Meanwhile, there’s talk – there’s been talk for a while – about expanding capacity to between 14,000 and 15,000. While such plans have been reported for a while, the club has, wisely, taken a softly, slowly approach. Not so much build it and they will come, but wait for the deafening clamour, then build it and they will come.
Much depends on how they get on this season. There are plenty of ProD2-hardened clubs that struggle early on in the Top 14. Common wisdom sets a broadly defined three-season survival, consolidation, ambition scheme in motion for clubs that step up.
Every now and then a club breaks that model. Racing 92 went promotion to play-off in a single campaign in 2008/09 – and have filled one of the six post-season play-off places every season since. Bayonne nearly followed suit two seasons ago, managing promotion to Champions Cup qualification in their return campaign, but found the going rather more difficult last time out, finishing 12th. And Oyonnax, promoted as champions in 2023, went straight back down to the ProD2 after just one campaign. They’ve set their stall out to return to the top flight at the first time of asking. But getting back up isn’t going to be easy. Provence, Brive, Beziers, and Grenoble all have serious Top 14 ambitions, while born-again Biarritz, Montde-Marsan Nevers, and, perhaps, Dax, should not be under-estimated.
But that’s not Vannes’ problem this year. They’ve been promoted from the ProD2 as champions. Now comes the hard part.
As Cloarec said just 24 hours after watching his side lift the ProD2 bouclier in early June: “This is the start of our problems, let’s face it. We haven’t had much time to think about what lies ahead. We’re already struggling to realise what’s happening, so we might as well admit that what awaits us in a few weeks seems far away. Very far away.”
That was then. This is now. The new season is looming, and Vannes have just a few weeks left to get as ready as they are going to be before the season kicks off against the toughest opponents French rugby could imagine.
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