XV of France – “Jegou, Auradou and all the others”: the Monday editorial

We will therefore know, on Wednesday, if the staff of the XV of France recall Oscar Jegou and Hugo Auradou to prepare for the next 6 Nations Tournament. So, what do we say about it? For or against? Good or bad? Angels or demons? To these (too) crude questions, where the almost dogmatic Manichaeism of “all white or all black” cannot shed any intelligent light on the situation, everyone has already formed their own opinion. And two camps are opposed.

Let us describe them in broad terms: on the one hand, the “legalists” rely on the law and the regulatory framework to assert that Oscar Jegou and Hugou Auradou benefited from a dismissal of the case by the Argentine justice system and a green light from their Federation, following the affair that we know about. From then on, their sporting performances alone must govern their international future; these performances are often good, sometimes very good since their return to the field and seeing them announced so early back in Marcoussis, in the list that Fabien Galthié will communicate on Wednesday, would then be common sense.

On the other side, we find a fringe more attentive to ethics, among lovers of the XV of France. They argue that there is law but also morality, the rule and the spirit of the rule. That beyond the judicial epilogue recorded by a dismissal (which therefore has no value of innocence…), there is above all this idea that we cannot decently represent France, its rugby and its virtues today mistreated today, when we were recently involved in a case which included the words “rape”, “violence” and “sequestration”. It’s a question of image, not just theirs: that of an entire sport, which we commit to its name when we put on the blue tunic emblazoned with the rooster. It is also the price of glory and notoriety, where exemplarity should not be an empty word.

Two chapels, two visions of the “Mendoza affair” and its consequences, now sporting. The truth is obviously elsewhere, somewhere in between. However, this is what coach Fabien Galthié and his staff will have to decide, at the start of the week, when they decide (or not) to call up the two players without delay. The trend is for their immediate return in blue, also to close this sinister page as quickly as possible.

Further, and beyond just their cases, the final point which seems to be written in this affair should not make us forget everything. The drifts and slippages, which have become too numerous, are an evil that rugby must cure at the root of its third halves. “Treat” is the right word when we are dealing with an illness that has become endemic.

Do not forget the Bordeaux trial, the cases in Béziers, Dax, Bourg-en-Bresse and everywhere else; the accusations against Haouas, Hogg, Hounkpatin, Jaminet and so many others. Do not forget that Clermont (with Haouas), Castres (with Hounkpatin) or Oyonnax (this week with Grice and Farrell) knew how to take their responsibilities in the face of the unacceptable, but that many of our other leaders preferred opportunism to ethics, putting their sporting interest well ahead of their sense of collective responsibility.

Don’t forget that just one week after the explosion of the “Argentinian bomb”, around ten of Jegou and Auradou’s teammates were back at it again, in the wild night of Buenos Aires, despite the formal ban on going out this time formulated by the management of the XV of France and its then captain, Baptiste Serin. If Jegou and Auradou paid dearly for the Blues’ Latin summer, with prison and the honor controversy, others escaped unscathed. Proof, again, that the problem goes far beyond the sole subject of Jegou-Auradou. The future, on all these subjects, will have to be about prevention, education, support but also sanctions, for those who go beyond the now clearly established framework.