A tres bizarre rugby match

Last Saturday, Jen, some of our friends and I went to a rugby match between the Parisian team and a team from Perpignan, Spain. The match was at the Stade de France which is the impressive stadium that the World Cup Final was held at a few years ago. It was terribly cold, made even worse by a constant wind. Something about the stadium had a cold feeling to it as well since there was really no interior - just lots of cement columns. The concessions were pretty awful and reminded me more of what you could find a a minor league stadium in the US.

Our crew

We decided to get to the game about an hour early to check out the tailgaiting. Well it turns out there isn't any tailgaiting. The stadium is on the edge of a large commercial/industrial area just on the outside of Paris. As far as we could tell, there wasn't any parking near the stadium which meant that most people took the train. We thought we had made a mistake and were doomed to sit in the cold for an hour to wait for the game. Instead, the next hour turned out to be more exciting than the match itself.

Stade de France

I admit I don't know much about rugby and was a little confused when I looked at my ticket. Apparently the Parisian club is called "Stade Francais" and they play at Stade de France?? And when we found our seats, the stadium was filled with crazy fans waving pink flags...yep, the Parisian club. And their transportation to the game...a pink limo. I thought rugby was supposed to be a tough guy's sport, but apparently these Parisian players have a soft spot.

Fans waving pink flags

And the pink limo

Maybe to prove they were in fact tough, they brought out the strongmen although they were wearing pink T-shirts. We actually thought for a moment that this might be the rugby team on the track. They were rolling cars, picking up massive tires and doing power squats with tree trunks. It was quite impressive and the fans loved it. This probably went on for 20 minutes before I realized that this probably wasn't the rugby team. After all, what better way to wear yourself out before a match than to repeatedly roll over a small Peugot.

The strongmen

The strongmen took a bow and exited the stage to make way for the musical guest. The next twenty minutes we were treated to some bad French pop music courtesy of some guy playing keyboards and a drummer. It was otherwise unremarkable so I went to grab a beer. When I came back, the band (two guys?) were wrapping up. As they pulled down the mini stage and dragged it off the field with a John Deere farm tractor, we could tell that something big was getting ready to happen. There were large floats of sea creatures taking to the sky and fire torches visible in all four tunnels leading to the field.

As the scene started to come together, five or six floats were up and "swimming" around the open space of the stadium. Some kind of melodic and airy music came on as the sea creatures made their way around the fishbowl. It looked like one of the World Cup half time shows that didn't get picked, but was decided should be played out sometime in the future. There was a person tethered to one of the sea creatures that was endlessly doing acrobatics or maybe he had completely lost control and was trying to right himself. Whatever it was, we were all distracted and didn't see the next scene developing. A pod of sorts was wheeled into the middle of the field and human arms were sticking out from all sides. As the music picked up pace, the top of the pod sprouted with a wormlike creature. High above the bug, the dangler was trying not to fall into its mouth.

Sea creatures When we thought things couldn't get any weirder, gladiators wearing armor and carrying swords entered the scene pushing a large trailer that carried a golden rugby ball. As the trailer made its way to center field, goddesses wearing loinclothes and little else, made their way from all four tunnels.

The whole scene was set and we all wondered how they would make a transition from this to the match. In a final act of symbolism (of what I'm not sure), the sea creatures pulled back, the gladiator's rugby ball opened up to reveal a large tiger and the loinclothes dropped. And the fans went wild! As if to confirm that they really did just drop the loinclothes, they put one of the goddesses on the big screen. In the madness of the moment, the rugby players stormed onto the field and met with a standing ovation of pink. I turned to a French fan next to me and asked if they do this at all the games. To that he responded, "no, c'est tres bizarre". A few hours later, we left the match early. It was getting really cold and while we thought the match was good, we knew we had already seen the most interesting part of the day.