Dax Gamarde Basket is dead, a look back at a descent into hell

IOn Thursday, September 12, Jérôme Mansanné, the president of Dax Gamarde Basket (DGB), had an appointment at the Mont-de-Marsan commercial court for a hearing, after having filed the club’s “bankruptcy” application there on July 4. “We had reached the end of the line, it was no longer possible to continue, we were not going to dig a hole on top of a hole,” he commented after this decisive meeting.

On October 10, he should know during the deliberation if the club’s claims are abandoned. “I made the decision that others did not make before me,” he adds, fatalistically, while at the beginning of the summer, Dax Gamarde Basket was indeed on the program for the first day of the Coupe des Landes, for a match that was to be played on Saturday, September 14.

Lack of guarantees

From a sporting and human perspective, the DGB’s last season, in National 2, was experienced by its president as a descent into hell: “At the end of May, we had the decision of the Management Control Commission which demoted us to Regional, after several months of internal and sporting crises (the players had gone on strike from training for several weeks due to salary delays, Editor’s note). We had three weeks to appeal the decision, and at the start, that’s what we wanted. Then I looked at what the financial guarantees were, in terms of subsidies and private partnership, if we had started again. And unfortunately, the account was not there.”

At the level of the Agglo du Grand Dax, there were no certainties. “On an annual budget of 450,000 euros, 90,000 euros, like previous seasons, or 45,000, it’s not the same,” he emphasizes. The call was withdrawn in mid-June.

“Covid hurt”

How could a basketball club that had just been relegated from National 1 (level reached in 2019), and was preparing an ambitious merger with ADB, the “other” club in Grand Dax, have suffered such a fall? “Covid hurt in 2021,” begins Jérôme Mansanné. “We are in N1, but we are playing without an audience, without being able to organize events or partner meals, and already, before relegation, the accounts are plummeting.”

“The 2022-2023 season,” he continues, “I am co-president of the club with Jean Lamaignère, he takes care of partnerships and finance, I take care of the sport and the launch of the merger project. He leaves in June, but comes back to help the club while I work on the merger. He finally resigns in January 2024 by sending a letter to the board of directors. Those who think that I managed to sink the club’s finances in four months of presidency are wrong.”

Jean Lamaignère, the resigning co-president, says the same thing, even if the divorce between the two men seems to be complete: “I ran this club for twenty-eight years, I sacrificed everything, personal and professional life… There were very highs, and there were very lows, like now,” he sighs. It had already happened in the past, but I had managed at the time to avoid what is happening today. Jérôme is right to say that it is multiple parameters that lead to this situation, and the decision that had to be taken in agreement with the club’s board of directors. I am sad about it and I think about it every day. In June 2023, I left the co-presidency, I wanted to retrain professionally. Then I was asked to stay, with this merger project. In January 2024, I sent a letter of resignation, I did not believe in the merger project between the two clubs, not in this way, and I saw it as a no-go area. Some understood it, others did not.

The former manager also acknowledges in this letter of resignation “having left the club in a sporting and financial situation which is not the best”.

Jérôme Mansanné, for his part, now wants to turn the page, once and for all. On the courts and the DGB: “Basketball in Dax is thirty-three years of my life, and the painful experience of the last few months has definitely put me off basketball.” For the players as well as for the coach Erwan Mourier, who signed with Le Cannet, it was necessary to find other commitments during the summer. Two ex-DGB players, Corentin Carne and Cédric Mansaré, have thus joined the ADB.

Gamarde leaves alone

The mayors of the municipalities of Dax and Gamarde acknowledged the decision at the end of last week: “Obviously, it’s a disappointment, it’s a club that has won titles, we have always supported them, the municipal subsidy has also been paid,” explains the mayor of Dax, Julien Dubois.

Grand Dax will continue to support ADB, the other club in the Agglo. “The merger project with DGB, for which we were able to establish a program over several years, will not be possible. The community also did not have to intervene in the governance of the clubs. I had proposed a union, we brought everyone around the table, and the schedule was accelerated by the DGB’s setbacks.”

The mayor of Gamarde-les-Bains, Jérôme Curutchet, would have liked a little more transparency and communication, but does not hide his admiration for the commitment of the last two leaders of the DGB: “They no longer speak to each other, it’s an open secret, but they both, at different times, did good work. The aborted merger was the final blow, and without this association, the DGB would have had difficulty going further.”

The statutes of a new association, Gamarde Basket, were recently filed, to start from scratch: “Team 2 of the DGB becomes the first team of this new project, where we want to take care of the youngsters, from baby basket to U18s, with the youngsters of Préchacq and Goos. But we clearly do not have the same objectives.”