Nick Cain: France’s ‘Little Napoleon’ is trying to rule in Europe

Posted on by in Nick Cain

When it comes to exercising absolute power within a rugby fiefdom there is no one who comes close to Pierre Camou. Since 2007 Camou has been the president of the French Federation de Rugby (FFR), and while the French love to pay lip service to the mantra of the French Revolution – liberty, equality and fraternity – it is deeply ironic that they love nothing more than a bit of good old authoritarian rule.

That ‘Little Napoleon’ trait has characterised Camou’s conduct during the current Heineken Cup war. Not only did he browbeat the French clubs’ body, the LNR, into leaving the English clubs in the lurch over their new Rugby Champions Cup initiative, he then torpedoed any chance of a reconciliation by refusing to countenance the Six Nations as the new governing body of the agreed new European Cup format.

It was not the first example of Camou jumping straight in with a pair of size 15 hobnail boots, and there was no excuse for the English clubs not being aware of an outlook which is fundamentally antipathetic towards them.

He had a previous track record for pulling rank, most notably when he stormed into a Heineken Cup board meeting three years ago and sequestered all the French club votes in order to prevent the ERC chairman, Jean-Pierre Lux, from being voted out of office in favour of Peter Wheeler of England.

Too much power vested in the hands of one-man (or woman) is something that the British are instinctively wary off. Where the presidents of the English, Welsh, Irish and Scottish Unions are essentially honorary titles and usually held for only a year, entitling the officeholder to rub shoulders with the great and the good in exchange for executive travel perks, with the French it is different.

The president of the FFR is vested with complete authority over the game in France by the French government – and that means he is all-powerful. For instance, in England if you wanted to start a rugby club from scratch there would be nothing to stop you from doing so, and then registering it with the RFU. In France, “Monsieur Le President” would be required to give his permission.

It’s all very despotic – and that description is not too far off the mark where any analysis of the methods employed by either Camou, or Bernard Lapasset, his friend and FFR presidential predecessor, and incumbent IRB chairman, are concerned.

These two autocratic rugby heavyweights have taken France from being a peripheral influence on the world game to being its controlling influence. Nowhere is this truer than in the current battle for the future of the European cup.

Camou is a Basque whose background is a strange alchemy of local banker and student activist during the1968 riots against the government, a period during which, according to a French newspaper, he manned the barricades. He then travelled the world hitch-hiking, biking or walking the revolutionary paths of South America and Cuba as well as taking the hippy trail to Kathmandu and trekking through various parts of Africa.

On his return to France, and a career in banking, he played for his local club and the former prop/lock has confessed to spending more time brawling on Saturday afternoons than attending to the finer points of the game.

The contradictions come thick and fast. Camou purports to be more humanist than nationalist, and was a strong advocate of overseas players like South African prop Pieter de Villiers and Kiwi centre Tony Marsh playing for France.

However, it is difficult to square this liberal world view with the domineering approach he adopts in his role as French rugby’s strongman – one who brooks no opposition, and insists that papa Pierre knows best.

There are unmistakable signs that Camou wants a change in the European order, with France as the centrifugal force. The 68-year-old Bayonne banker is a signed-up member of the French administrative elite that has always wanted a bigger role in European rugby for FIRA – the Gallic-influenced power block which represents the smaller, largely amateur, nations.

Camou and company have been encouraged in this by the European Commission which has said that it will talk only to FIRA about rugby issues, because the IRB is not a European administrative body, but a global one.

The French and their FIRA allies have also been spurred on to challenge the structure of the Six Nations, claiming that it is an outdated institution dominated by ‘Anglo-Saxon’ interests.

Despite the admission of Italy to the Six Nations in 2000 – and of Italian clubs into the European Cup – the French claim that it is a closed shop.

As a result, the French Federation have the backing of the French clubs (LNR) and their president, Paul Goze, in proposing a UEFA-style administrative reorganisation based in Switzerland – with French-speaking Geneva the favoured site – to take over.

The French argue that this will establish a meritocratic system at international and club level, allowing up-and-coming Eastern European nations such as Russia and Georgia to supplant underperforming Six Nations sides like Scotland and Italy.

In principle, supporting a meritocracy in European competition has a huge amount going for it – but the idea that the French are being wholly altruistic in their proposals is nonsense.

A UEFA style body would obviously extend the FFR’s power base at the expense of the English-speaking Unions. Meanwhile, from a French club point of view, it gives them an intravenous feed into the pool of new Eastern European talent, with Top 14 coaches benefiting from a steady flow of Romanians, Georgians and Russians.

The French plot thickens further because although the LNR/Top 14 coffers are full to overflowing, it is on the brink of becoming mega-rich – the richest club property in Rugby Union (or Rugby League) – by signing a new television deal.

The LNR are currently considering withdrawing from their deal with pay-television broadcaster Canal Plus as they believe they can negotiate a new contract with rival pay-television broadcaster beIN Sport worth double the existing five year €133m deal.

Should the deal come off, the purchasing power it will give the Top 14 clubs will radically alter the game in Europe. With €266m to play with, the Heineken Cup could soon become a mere sideshow because there will be no-one from any rugby country on earth that the French clubs will not be in a position to buy.

However, for the moment resolving the Heineken Cup log-jam is top of the agenda, and there were signs this week that the RFU are not going to let French opportunism go unchallenged.

The English are unhappy with the way Camou blocked the Six Nations taking over the governance of the Heineken Cup, and the RFU’s chief executive, Ian Ritchie, pointed the finger at the French for playing fast and loose with something that offered a chance to break the stalemate.

“We should all bust a gut to get there because failure would not be a good number,” Ritchie said. “We had reached an understanding last month that the Six Nations committee would operate the tournament, with clear roles for Unions and clubs, but the only one not to sign up for it was the French Federation.

“Unfortunately, the French have always been reticent about the Six Nations committee because of their own association with FIRA, and they wanted a new company to be formed to run the tournament.”

Ritchie added: “The narrow governance issue of replacing ERC with the Six Nations is complex enough. If you then say let’s tie that into a discussion about the future of European rugby with a body like FIRA – which I believe has about 273 votes – and it becomes even more so. The prospect of finding a temporary one-year solution, as the French are proposing, while trying to negotiate all of this seems pretty tricky to me. I am a great believer in the do-able.”

For a long time there has been a body of opinion that when it comes to self-interest the French are out on their own among the European nations. So far, Camou and his mates are doing little to dispel that view.

This article was brought to you by The Rugby Paper, the UK's best-selling rugby publication, on-sale every Sunday.

To subscribe to The Rugby Paper CLICK HERE

Tagged France, Nick Cain, Pierre Camou