This Sunday (3 p.m.), Sporting welcomes Casteljaloux in a roadblock. A match of final phases of Federal 2 at the Camille-Guibert stadium that the blue and white people had not known since 2015. President, manager, players, they remember.
Play the final stages on your lawn, in your lair. Immediately, the eye shines, the smiles shed light on faces and memories go up to the surface like small life capsules, those that we want to relive eternally even ten years later. Ten long, but not so painful as that, years in which Sporting gnawed at its brake, even railed at times when he finished last season on the lawn of Prades, already in play -offs, after a good journey for his second season in Federal 2. This time, the club dear to President Frédéric Mathou will taste the joys to see his audience, his supporters invade stands and gradins sentence falls inexorably in case of good or bad services.
“For once, we came across really stronger”
Because in Decazeville, if we have a taste for victory, we also want to proudly wear its colors like this April 25, 2015 when Sporting will play its latest game of Federal 2 Final phases before that of Sunday and this match against Casteljaloux. After a very remarkable season, Sporting will finish fourth in its pool, does that remind you of anything?
Except that that year, the final stages began in 16th in a round trip and Sporting falls on a first of a hen and not the least, nîmes with a certain Tavite Vedamu in its ranks that can be seen today, an officer in the wing of Perpignan in Top 14. So general manager of the club, Dominique Alaux remembers: “We had no major ambitions for the season. Like all teams, we wanted to go as far as possible and offer final stages to our supporters. For once, we came across really stronger than us.“Indeed, during the first round, in a Camille-Guibert full to crack, Sporting falls heavily 24-41. Florent Petitjean, the Decazevillois center resumes:”We did not cheat. Even today, I think we have given the best of ourselves; But Nîmes was really superior in all the compartments of the game. “
The elimination is almost, no doubt, but Florent Petitjean retains an emotional and even joyful memory by evoking this match. “”In Decazeville, a final phase match is always a guarantee of a great party and you know in advance that you will have an audience in support. So you come back to the field with pressure, but with the head to respect this blue and white jersey and above all respect the supporters.“
“A great pride of belonging”
The rest is only sport, seems to say the ex-captain Decazevillois who, like his predecessors, and his successors, very quickly understood that this land houses a very different population from other places in Aveyron as evidenced by the president of the time, today leader in Rodez Rugby, Jean-Luc Delaneau: “Here, when Sporting plays the final stages, there is a great pride of belonging. I have always been surprised at the evening of a victory, of a non-qualification for the final stages, to see people tears in my eyes.“This pride to exist, for a rugby match where the nastiest, as certainly the most envious to find the shortcut as hard as it is irrespective, to shout that there is only that in the basin to exist.
Ten years later, nobody remembers that Sporting, during the return match, lost only eleven points (25-14), had to compose with a reduced workforce, relaunching two former warriors in the bath. Luc Soulié, who took care of the reserve, and Dominique Alaux, forced to put together the crampons. “” It was my last rugby match at 40 “, Smiles the old third line and captain Decazevillois.
Jean-Luc Delaneau, he returns to an anecdote that still makes him laugh today: “Luc Soulié marks an essay in Nîmes by contrasting a ball. And I hear guys around me say: “The guy who has just scored, he served beers at the refreshment bar in the first leg.” “This is also Sporting, the sense of sacrifice. Players who would give everything for the club, even if it means getting out of their early retirement to defend their colors.
So Sunday, when entering the lawn, some in the stands as on the lawn, will have butterflies in the stomach and these butterflies, they will be blue and white.
