“It’s an aberration”: will the Cagnes-sur-Mer volleyball players stop off in Marrakech to play… in Bordeaux?

Neither gag nor publicity stunt. Laurent Hoff is not really in the mood, before tackling this new season which will see his players discover the much more demanding requirements of the National 2.

The president of US Cagnes volleyball even has an abnormally dark look when talking about this real “bamboo blow” which he took on the back of the head, at the end of July, when the composition of the different groups of the championship was finally made official.

We rewind…

“An aberration towards which we were pushed”

At the end of June, all the planets were aligned. The women’s team, already assured of promotion to N2, was crowned French champion, at the end of its Final Four; the boys also climbed a level and reached National 3; while the youngsters, thanks to the M15 girls, allowed the club to shine in the Coupe de France (semi-finalists), thus showing that the work, in terms of training, was bearing fruit. In short, on the US Cagnes side, we were complacently “wallowing” in sporting success…

“We then, as always, worked on a provisional budgetrelates the president of USC. A budget that was as rigorous as possible, and that I had my steering committee vote on, knowing that our margin of error had not exceeded a few hundred euros. We obviously took into account subsidies, which we know tend to decrease, and included the cost of future travel. For that, we relied on the composition of the groups from past seasons, and ours was a priori limited to a large south-eastern quarter of France.”

“But when the calendars came out, on July 27, after the Federation had waited for the decisions of the National Directorate of Aid and Management Control [le gendarme financier du volley] and/or the French Olympic Committee, we realized that in addition to Castres and Toulouse, we had to go to the Bordeaux region four times (Pau, Le Haillan, Mérignac and Bordeaux). It seemed crazy and above all did not take into account our financial concerns or environmental priorities. When we then went to the airlines’ websites, we immediately understood that it was a disaster, because there are no direct flights…”

7,000 euros to be found

In Cagnes, as in many other clubs, impacted by this “redistribution”, we are therefore up in arms against a decision, which is justified in the eyes of the Federation by the distribution “fair” of the number of training centers of professional clubs.

“We were completely at a loss, especially since the regulations state that the groups must be as geographical as possible, to limit travel as much as possible. So we contacted the Central Sports Commission, who told us that we had no recourse. Many of us still contacted the Federation’s board of directors, as the texts authorized us to do. But, in the end, it was no use…”

A far from neutral rejection, since Laurent Hoff estimates the additional cost of these trips to be between 5,000 and 7,000 euros. So, with any savings now welcome, and given the shortage of flights for a Nice-Bordeaux flight, especially in winter, he does not rule out having his players travel via… Marrakech!

“Going via Paris, to get to Bordeaux, it’s 5 hours. Here, it would be almost the same thing, but with 30 euros less per ticket. Multiplied by 13, we quickly did the calculation. Nothing is definitive, but if it’s the same plane that does the rotation, we’ll try the experiment. On the other hand, if there are transfers, or a change of aircraft, it will surely be more complicated… In any case, this is today the aberration towards which we have been pushed…”

Another solution, which seems to be the consensus in the group: play twice in the same weekend, again to limit costs. For example, by playing at Haillan on Saturday, in Bordeaux on Sunday.

“But we have turned the calendar upside down and for us, it is not possible. On the other hand, for the clubs that have this possibility and who have asked us, we have agreed to postpone our matches. Even if, logically, a young person under 21 does not have, by regulation, the right to play twice in 48 hours. But there, strangely, we will benefit from exemptions…”

The downside to these “little arrangements between friends” is that the Cagnoises will most likely be deprived of official matches from December 7 to January 26. “Almost two months without playing, it’s going to be difficult to keep up the pace…”

For the sacrosanct sporting fairness, we will also have to come back. “And, however, we don’t want that to compromise our momentum. Because we have ambition and the squad is designed to aim for the top half of the table…”

Now it remains to be seen how all this can be managed internally…