the essential
It is a 21-year-old pillar that we are going to discover today. An ambitious rugby player who passed through Perpignan and Montauban, before arriving in Fleurance five months ago. Meeting with Florian Maffre.
Florian Maffre was born in Perpignan and it was at the Salanque Côte Radieuse XV club that he started rugby at the age of 11, after his sporting debut with another ball, that of football. Noticed through the various departmental and regional selections, Florian will quickly find himself at the USAP as a cadet to stay there until his hope. To get more playing time, the solid Florian bounced back to Montauban where he distinguished himself with the Espoirs for two seasons, while occasionally integrating the pro group into training.
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And after Montauban, it was Fleurance, a change which happened a little by chance as he explains: “I honestly hadn't planned to leave Montauban but at the end of the season we were slow to get there. propose something and in the end I found myself without anything concrete and, through acquaintances, I looked for where to bounce back. »
DDM – R.C.
He continues: “Walter Desmaison (ASF coach, Editor’s note) called me saying that he was interested in me and that he wanted me to come to the club with him. I thought about it, because my ambition remains to play as high as possible and make a living from this sport, but I said “yes” because I hope here to gain experience and showcase myself to bounce higher in some time. »
“We are leaving for Mauléon with big ambitions”
Very motivated, Florian has quickly proven himself in the ASF group since he has just made four starts and he hopes with his team to maintain the good momentum of recent weeks. “At the start of the season, it took time for the group to take shape, for the automatisms to take hold between each other. The first block was also difficult against big teams and we remained in difficulty until Auch, with a failed derby, then in Anglet. Afterwards, we refocused, we looked at each other together and we said to ourselves that this was not what we wanted from the season. Before the block of Saint-Jean-de-Luz, Graulhet and Arcachon we asked ourselves at the start of the week to find out how many points we wanted to obtain and in the end we ended up ticking the three boxes. And as Philippe Maymat (another ASF coach, Editor's note) said: we put the three bricks on our wall to progress. »
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Amateur rugby: “It remains a locker room secret…” AS Fleurance on the upward slope in Nationale 2
Now that the ASF is starting to recover, we can wonder what the club's hopes and ambitions are. Florian has his own idea: “We are going to attack a difficult block which begins this Sunday at Mauléon and I think that it will be the block which will decide everything for the rest of the season… Either it will allow us to start a good place in the standings, or we will continue to grab points and try to save ourselves by staying above tenth place. But after three successes, we are leaving for Mauléon with big ambitions to pick up points there and continue at our pace. »
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For the rest of the season, “we still hope to play the final stages”. “We started the season at low speed, so if we can finish at full speed, that will be nice, knowing that by mid-January we will surely be a little more certain about our fate,” Florian analyzes lucidly. Now it's time for the field, a field on which Florian gives himself body and soul, he, who, at 21 years old, always keeps in mind to evolve even higher.
