re-elected, Florian Grill is pleased to now have “a clear, democratic and strong mandate”

Florian Grill was largely re-elected as president of the French Rugby Federation, a position he has held since June 2023, the FFR announced on Saturday. Grill, who was opposed to former international Didier Codorniou, won with 67.22% of the votes of some 1,900 French clubs, and will be in office until the fall of 2028.

A plebiscite for his re-election
“I was hoping that we would do better than 58% which was the score of the last election. Progressing is a real satisfaction. It was not because we were previously in a somewhat complex position of cohabitation to pilot this federation which is a big ship, with 11 elected out of 40 on the steering committee – even if some have joined us – and three regional leagues out of 13, plus the seven overseas. The fact of making very significant progress is a real satisfaction.”

A very tense campaign
“We achieved appeasement when we were elected 15 months ago. It was very important for world rugby that France was not on fire during the World Cup. We introduced into the statutes, and we have done so over the last 15 months, a proportional share. The federal office will become a strategic office. And this proportional part must allow us to work together. I always believed that there were not enough volunteers in rugby to do without half of them. I want rugby to be peaceful because the projects are such that we cannot afford to have rugby that goes to war. Afterwards, how did I experience this campaign? very difficult. I didn’t wait for the campaign to go to the field every weekend, so it’s not the fatigue of the campaign. And the drama of Medhi (Narjissi, disappeared at sea in South Africa, Editor’s note) and the events of the summer were particularly trying. Then, the campaign was very difficult in a deleterious climate, with the difficulties and dramas of the summer.

When you are in the French team, when you have the chance to wear the rooster, it’s not just rights, it’s also a lot of responsibilities and a lot of duties.

Florian Grill

How to restore the image of French rugby
“Certainly not by hiding behind your little finger, nor by sweeping dust under the rug. I’m a second line, I’m not really into the avoidance strategy. We have to face the problems head on, agree to put words to the problems and that’s what we do. There were the Estates General who did not want to publish our results before Fabien was able to see the players and staff of the France team. We will do the same with the 14 French teams. But we will have a new framework for rugby, because there will be a before and after Mendoza. We are going to have this autumn tour with the three matches (Japan, New Zealand, Argentina), I hope they will give us a lot of energy and desire. I am expecting supporters and all rugby fans en masse on this occasion. And then there is the work that the clubs do: I don’t want the summer to cast a dark veil over the reality of what the clubs do on a daily basis. We have 360,000 licensed people, 60,000 volunteers who do crazy work, who give snacks to kids who don’t have any, who welcome overweight kids, who find jobs, who work in priority neighborhoods , which energize rural areas where the rugby club is more important than the post office. That’s the truth of rugby. (…) When we are in the French team, when we have the chance to wear the rooster, it is not just rights, it is also a lot of responsibilities and a lot of duties.”

His position on the 20-minute red card
“We think that rugby will not be built sustainably, and that should be the challenge for World Rugby, if we are not incredibly vigilant in protecting players. We have therefore been pleading at World Rugby for 15 months not only to lower the tackle line. We are starting to have data, and in particular with connected mouthguards, which shows that there is a direct correlation between the height of the tackle and the concussion. Regarding the 20-minute red card, we also went into the data, because it must not be the one who speaks the loudest who is right, we must rationalize the comments a little, so we analyzed top 14 matches over the last three years, and the same for international matches, and the team that takes a red card only loses in 60% of cases. So ultimately this 20-minute red card is a mistake. There will be a vote on November 14, we made a press release in French and English, we rationalized our comments. If it is voted on it will be binding on us, it will be tested during the matches in the fall, but we think that it does not go in the direction of protecting the players, it does not go in the direction of the interest of world rugby, and this is an additional risk for the players. It seems to us that this is a risk that we should not take.”

The next battle of the regional leagues
“I am sorry for this series of repeated elections which are trying, but I am also banking on the regional leagues because the alignment between the federal vision and local visions is extremely important to move rugby forward. The regional leagues are decentralized bodies of the federation and we see that if consistency is not achieved, it is more complicated. So I support the candidates who supported us locally, because this alignment is important. Afterwards I think that we have a clear mandate, we have a clear, democratic, strong mandate, after a trying campaign, but which should allow us to move forward. We managed to move forward casually in cohabitation, it was not that simple, we passed all of our reforms, since out of 40 elected to the steering committee, there are 16 who are in the home stretch resigned, but as a result there are 24 who have somehow validated the essential part of our strategy starting from 11. So we have progressed, we have managed to move rugby forward, and the mandate given to us today Today is a clear mandate. But I don’t want to oppose our 67% and Didier Codorniou’s 33%, we voted on our 15-month term to ensure that there is representation in the future strategic office. We will therefore have to work with Didier Codorniou, I think he is a great international player in French rugby, and that he will have his place, if he wishes, within this strategic office to advance rugby.

Money for communities is not going to fall from the sky

Florian Grill

The reduced place of sport in the state budget
“The reality of how to rectify the accounts of the French rugby federation in three years is that we must be “centimiated”, that is to say that we are in the process of spending the entire our suppliers in review, and request reductions of the order of 10, 20, 30%, within the limits of the contracts as they are fixed. We have reviewed the accommodation conditions, including for our French teams, we can lower one star without calling into question sporting performance. We do the internships now in Marcoussis, it costs us less to do an internship in Marcoussis than anywhere else: we are at home, so it’s a way of reducing. We are not doing a social plan at the Federation because we are not a company, but for all that, we have already reduced the payroll by around 5%. It had increased considerably previously, we are not going to replace all of the departures, and then we weigh, we act on all sources of income, we maintain our partner budget objectives, contrary to what has been said. In the coming months, we will announce one and maybe even two new ones, so there you have it, the work is largely done on that, we try to optimize what we call “expensive income”.

Furthermore, today, in the case of the Six Nations, France receives 16% of the revenue, while it generates 26, and the English receive 31%. It is the fruit of a historic contract that we discovered, which is not balanced, which is not “fair”, as the Anglo-Saxons say, so we are in the process of renegotiating . We are also renegotiating with the Stade de France, as part of the new concession. There are huge issues at stake, we made our voice heard by saying that rugby contributed 40% of the Stade de France’s revenue, and even 50% if we included indirect revenue, so we are a very, very big contributor. of the Stade de France, so we expect more from the proposals that could be made to us in this context. Afterwards, the context is not good from the point of view of community money and State money. We see that sports budgets are announced to be in sharp decline, in our project, I am focusing more on the business world, via CSR (corporate social responsibility), via patronage, via partnerships… Money from communities are not going to fall from the sky.”

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