Stade Toulousain’s oldest player, still going strong at almost 105 years old

There’s something, there’s definitely something, his entourage repeats over and over again. And it’s true that if you start a conversation with Marius Garrigues, 105 years old, you’re overwhelmed by amazement and wonder. In fact, it’s standing up, with a confident step, that the resident of “Grand Maison”, the retirement home in L’Union, comes to meet you. We sit down for the interview and a history book opens with joy… On the Stade Toulousain, of course, of which he is – hands down – the oldest player still alive, but on so many other subjects! Look, politics, not that of Léon Blum, René Coty or General de Gaulle, no, that of today, which preoccupies him like any citizen who is a little enlightened and worried by the worrying wave that is emerging: “With these 3 blocs in place, it’s going to be ungovernable. “We have to find a compromise. We’re not going to find a guy like de Gaulle again tomorrow, the one who impressed me the most.”
To say that Marius Garrigues is still in his right mind, and all his legs, is still a mild understatement, he who will celebrate his 105th birthday on August 19, in the company of his son (75 years old), his granddaughter (who has become a brilliant lawyer) and his two great-grandsons. There will also be his brother Lucien, younger than him, as fresh as a daisy at… 97 years old! “Okay, there must be something in our genes,” confides Marius, narrowing his eyes clearer than coral. His mother died at… 99 years old!

3/4 center during the war!

At the “Grand Maison”, Marius organizes his days “à la carte, as I see fit, with the kindness of all the staff”. He has his meals served in his room and watches political and sports programs on TV. This Friday evening, inevitably, he will be watching the broadcast of the Top 14 final, “between Toulouse and Bègles” he says (the UBB did not exist in his time!). This Toulouse stadium where he played 3/4 center for 5 years was during the 39-45 war. “We could still play our championship, we were in the free zone! I admire what they are doing today, they have managed to build a real group, and that is nothing new. At the time, I was training with my brother who was a junior, we were all pulling each other from above and that created emulation. »
Emulation, desire, courage. All his life, Marius will have been guided by these cardinal values: “It is morale, and even more so, desire that counts. The physique manages to follow if the desire is there. » And at 105 years old, Marius retains this saving enthusiasm which still makes him 100% autonomous, and so lucid about the world around him: “I never look behind me, I have always set myself objectives which I tried to hold on,” underlines the centenarian. It was he, among others, who was at the origin and directed the Federation of Textile Industries of the South in Mazamet (Tarn), in particular creating the IRSO, the inter-professional retirement fund of the South-West, whose headquarters was at the time rue Bayard in Toulouse… right opposite the editorial office of “La Dépêche”!