We are going to take a tour in the two Sèvres, alongside Niort Rugby Club which is qualified for the National final 2. To tell us about it, we are with their president Gilbert Nasarre, a president who is happy to finally arrive at the goal of almost touching the Grail namely a title of champions of France or even a climb even if it remains 80 minutes before being able to tuty the national.
For Niort, is it still the fruit of a long work that is paying and maturing today?
Yes, absolutely. We tried not to put the cart before the oxen as we say by us and therefore to pose the structuring of the club above all as well as to have wagons that the locomotive of the first team is likely to shoot. We are very happy to meet in the final of the French championship, especially since the season was rather correct despite what happened to the club with the disappearance of Quentin Gobet. It was therefore a very correct season with a construction, or reconstruction, as the months of the 2nd part of the season advanced, the reconstruction of a team to finish first in this championship.
During this final, Quentin Gobet will be in all hearts and in all heads on the side of Niort?
There is more than an event, it is an inclusion of Quentin Gobet in the group with a reference to his disappearance and above all, to what he brought us and what he brought to the group. Yes, he will be present in all the heads, in any case, he is involved in the collective of this first team.
As we said with your Breton counterparts, this match against Rennes is that of two teams who are alike in the patient structuring of a club?
That’s it, we know the Rennes, in any case as far as I am concerned, and we show the greatest respect for this club and for this team who knows where she is going and who also patiently builds her project. So we have a lot of respect, a lot of humility, the game and the success will decide on the fate of this match.
This final also shows that Niort Rugby Club has passed a course. We know that usually, you were rather feverish in the final stages and that you had trouble passing the glass ceiling of the dams or the 1/4 finals but there, you have the impression that you freed yourself?
I think that throughout the season, on big games, we saw that we were present, that we knew how to be resilience but also efficiency. When we look at our statistics, we can see that we have a team that does not get a lot of points and I hope that on Sunday, we will not take too much either (laughs). In fact, it is a team that has been built on this ability to impose itself on the fundamentals of rugby that are fight, defense and commitment. Yes, this team is built on fundamentals that allow everyone to find themselves in what rugby is truly and that the final phases are a little pinned or, in any case, allow you to reach the climax of these values.
-
On the side of Niort, a title of champion of France and a rise in national would still be a consecration for your work for many years within the RNC?
I do not see it like that, I think it is above all a matter of players, it is their project. I am not at all on the consecration, I think it is a long-term project that we are leading to go up, it is a beautiful thing, it is magnificent and a title, I would say that it is even more beautiful but now, it is how we stay and how we continue our project, how do we chain all the axes of our project between them to really make this club evolve, that is the subject taken in its entirety. For the moment, we are in the final, we know that a final is 50/50 and the success at the end which can switch on one side as on the other so we do not envisage no further, me, in any case, I see no further on Sunday.
In the event of a climb, is there going to be a change in Niort Rugby Club or will you continue to put the stones in step by step and one after the other?
No change because, you know, we are club mission and committed as such in societal and environmental. We will therefore put the factors in the right order, continue to build gradually, what we consider must be the project of Niort Rugby Club but a project which can also generate vocations therefore no change but continuation of logical construction with, once again, factors in the right order.
Can we expect to see the Niortais people go up en masse in Tours for this final against Rennes?
Against Orleans, we had already won the supporters’ match so I think there will be even more people this Sunday. We know that there are 5 buses that start from Niort more mini-bus, Tours is not far away so there are also a lot of cars. I think we must count on our supporters for Sunday.
Thank you and we wish you a nice final
Thank you so much.
Interview by Loïc Colombié
Article in partnership with
