The brutal 30-man mass brawl in France that resulted in five red cards
There are some things in rugby that France seem to do better than anyone else. Epic comebacks, Gallic flair and extremely partisan crowds are all part of the French rugby DNA, but it would be wrong to exclude their ability to have a mass brawl from that list as well, and a Federale 1 encounter at the weekend proved that.
Former Hurricanes and Toulon winger and current employee of Hyeres-Carqueiranne David Smith recently shared a video of an epic brawl in a local derby between his side and La Seyne sur Mer in the French third division in the south of France on Sunday. With only 25 km separating the two sides this is obviously a heated affair and Smith effectively was a pitchside reporter, giving an up close and personal account of a brawl which involved the entire team. If you watch early on, one player takes a run up to join the melee only to be tripped up by one of his own players on the floor mid-jump, resulting in a Superman-esque dive into the brawl. These are simply scenes from a bygone era.
Worse still, Smith said that this was just one of three brawls in the match, which resulted in five red cards. He wrote on Twitter: "Welcome to the south of France rugby. Lol reminds me of our village games in Samoa come on. Let’s play rugby if you guys want to fight go do boxing. Our game today 5 reds cards and 3 big fights."
Watch the fight here:
France squad for the Six Nations
FORWARDS
Gregory Alldritt
Uini Atonio
Cyril Baille
Demba Bamba
Gaetan Barlot
Daniel Bibi Biziwu
Dylan Cretin
Francois Cros
Ibrahim Diallo
Thibaud Flament
Jean-Baptiste Gros
Mohamed Haouas
Anthony Jelonch
Bernard Le Roux
Sekou Macalou
Julien Marchand
Peato Mauvaka
Yoan Tanga
Romain Taofifenua
Florent Vanverberghe
Florian Verhaeghe
Paul Willemse
Cameron Woki
BACKS
Leo Berdeu
Baptiste Couilloud
Jonathan Danty
Brice Dulin
Antoine Dupont
Jules Favre
Antoine Hastoy
Melvyn Jaminet
Matthis Lebel
Maxime Lucu
Yoram Moefana
Romain Ntamack
Damian Penaud
Thomas Ramos
Teddy Thomas
Virimi Vakatawa
Tani Vili
Gabin Villiere