Rugby: Florian Grill re-elected president of the French Federation against Didier Codorniou

At the end of a stormy campaign and after a summer marked by drama and legal cases, Florian Grill was largely re-elected this Saturday to his position as president of the French Rugby Federation (FFR), with the mission of rectifying a body which pitches. This victory, which looks like a plebiscite for Florian Grill, with 67.22% of the votes and nearly 85% participation from some 1,900 French clubs, reinforces his fragile position acquired in a crisis situation in June 2023, in order to complete the mandate of Bernard Laporte, interrupted by the forced resignation of “Bernie”.

A tense duel

Now in office until the fall of 2028, Florian Grill finally survived without incident the sometimes virulent criticism of his opponent, the former international Didier Codorniou, who had notably denounced his “shopkeeper’s spirit” by accusing him of blackening the table about the state of the finances of the FFR. The final score of this electronic vote, which began on Friday and ended this Saturday, put an end to this tense duel between the incumbent and the “Little Prince” with 32 selections.

It must be said that the summer was nightmarish for French rugby. The indictment for aggravated rape of two players of the French XV, Oscar Jegou and Hugo Auradou, the 34-week suspension for racist remarks of Melvyn Jaminet, weighed on the climate of the campaign, as did the disappearance at sea of ​​the young Medhi Narjissi in South Africa during an internship with the French U18 team.

These various events did not, however, overturn the predictions, which always made Florian Grill the favorite against the surprise candidate Didier Codorniou, who came from the political world and had been away from rugby for decades and his retirement from sport. “My first thought goes to Medhi Narjissi and his family,” declared Florian Grill after the proclamation of his victory.

Straighten the accounts

Unlike June 2023, where the election was held under the pressure of the calendar before the World Cup in France and a few months after the forced ousting of President Bernard Laporte, convicted at first instance for corruption, Florian Grill has this time a “very clear democratic mandate”, which he called for, and a majority on the steering committee. While waiting for the regional league elections in the coming days. The re-elected president has set himself as “the first task of straightening out the federation’s accounts”, “without a social plan or tax on clubs”. After years of racking up deficits and with the losses of the organization of the 2023 World Cup to absorb, the Federation must tighten its belt and reduce its lifestyle.

Many other issues are also urgent: stabilized at around 360,000, the number of licensees does not match the media coverage of rugby, a flagship team sport but which is struggling to retain its young people, due to lack of supervision or fear of abuses associated with it, the fight against addictions and violence. The women’s rugby project, in full expansion but without sufficient infrastructure, is also a priority, less than a year before the next women’s world championship in England (August 22 – September 27, 2025).

It is also up to Florian Grill to restore calm, after recent tense weeks where the tone rose between the two camps, until the first day of voting on Friday when the Codorniou camp denounced “irregularities” and “technical incidents”. “I hope that together they will find a path for the appeasement that the Federation needs,” declared before the proclamation of the votes, Bernard Foucher, the president of the electoral operations monitoring commission, for whom the “tense climate” of the campaign “does not correspond to the values ​​of rugby”. This task will not be the least in a federation accustomed to clan wars.