The facts date back to December 14, 2022. That day, a rugby match organized by the National Union of School Sports (UNSS) took place. It opposes the Saint-Pierre de Tarbes and Notre-Dame-de-Garaison high schools of Moléon Magnoac. A banal encounter until a “cathedral” tackle on Mathias Dantin, 17, hit without a ball and tilted his head forward.
The head hits the ground. The gesture left Mathias Dantin quadriplegic after several months spent in intensive care. The player responsible for the tackle appeared on Tuesday, December 17, before the Tarbes Criminal Court for “violence leading to permanent disability”. An important trial for rugby and player safety.
This trial is eagerly awaited by Mathias Dantin and his family. They want justice, the world of rugby and the author of the gesture to become aware of what their lives have become over the past two years. Last weekend, a few days before the trial, as he tries to do regularly, Mathias, alongside his father, took part in an action to prevent dangerous actions in Basque rugby schools.
Each time, he tells his story via a children’s book that he co-wrote. An approach that has become vital, he tells us by telephone, between two awareness sessions. “All these things allow me, on the one hand, to be able to continue to do activities and on the other hand to always feel useful, to serve a purpose in all this tumult that we suffered all ago just two years”he says.
A breath in the middle of a daily life turned upside down for him of course, in a wheelchair, but also for his parents. “This gesture turned the whole life of a family upside downsays his father, Jérome Dantin. Today, my wife has not worked since December 14, 2022. She does not sleep at night. She is in shock. I stopped my activity a year ago. It’s also because we have to be near Mathias to help him. Today, Mathias needs someone 24 hours a day, day and night, whether for urinary problems, care problems but also for all the daily actions that Mathias can no longer perform, actions that are trivial to us. My wife and I alternate trips between Toulouse, where Mathias lives for his studies, and Tarbes, where we live. Today, we live around Mathias and only for Mathias.”
“I approach this trial with a lump in my stomach, the fear that we will not be heard.”
Jérôme Dantin, father of Mathiasat franceinfo
This trial must be, for them, recognition of their status as victims. And if Mathias says to approach this legal time “without much apprehension” : “I know it will be a moment to face, a moment in a lifetime, we will still have to face it moving forward.” On the other hand, when he talks about the usefulness of this trial, his message is very clear: “All I want is to have moral recognition, financial recognition of course, and above all recognition as a victim. For the moment, we have no recognition of the victims, whether financial or moral, in the sense that if we had not filed a complaint, no procedure would have been initiated. The person who did this was not even sanctioned: neither were the institutions which supervised the meeting.”
This is why Jérôme Dantin, his father, fears finding himself before the Tarbes criminal court. “A big first for us”he tells us at the outset, and to confide his fears: “I have a knot in my stomach and I’m afraid. The fear of not being heard, of not being recognized” he confides before speaking, moved, about the author of the tackle which turned the lives of his son and his family upside down. “We would like him to really and deeply know what he did., explains Jérôme Dantin. We are not expecting big sanctions, but this gesture must be engraved in him.”
“One day, maybe he will be a father, I wish him. And if he has a son who wants to play rugby, I want him to think about when he will take his son to a stadium, as long as he Don’t meet a jerk like me.”
Jérôme Dantin, father of Mathiasat franceinfo
For two years, the Dantin family has had no contact, no word, with the author of the tackle or with the player’s team. No one tried to contact them. Hearing in August, the player even remained silent, refusing to explain his actions. “For me, everything can be excused, but not forgiven. I have anger inside me, against them for that”says Jérôme Dantin.
Mathias, for his part, is thinking resolutely about the future and rugby, a sport he still loves. “With this trial, I just want to send the message that we are the victim of an action which does not comply with the rules of rugby, but also with the rules of life. It was an attack. And the fact of being able to point out these actions and have them judged shows that this is not trivial, that it should not have happened and that it must no longer happen.”
