Opposing the Blues Sunday, the Lelos, the Georgian national team, developed in close links with France.
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The slogan goes to them like a glove. Corrèze in autumn does not have much to do with the landscapes of the Caucasus, but the motto “All Gaillades”, which adorns several streets of Brive-la-Gaillarde, could have been written for the Georgian section of the Athletic Club Brive Corrèze Limousin, the local rugby team. “We are here,” says behind his redder beard the half of International Vasil Lobzhanidze, one of the six Georgians of the Corrézian Club. Here, in Brive, and in France, countries whose destiny is closely linked to the Caucasus in the Oval Caucasus.
LELOS (team nickname) face the XV of France, in Bordeaux, Sunday, November 14 at 2 pm “It’s a very important meeting, we want to show our progression, blows the 25-year-old player, and already more than 50 selections. And then, France, it’s special for us. We will not be too exotic.” Of the 33 players called to compete in the autumn tour, 19 evolve in France (14 in Top 14 and five in Pro D2). Among them, five brivists.
Although located more than three thousand kilometers from hexagon, rugby, Georgia posted an undeniable Francophilie. “France has had a major influence on the development of Georgian rugby, exposes Ioseb Tkemaladze, the President of the Georgian Rugby Federation. Claude Saurel, our first foreign coach, is French and has brought a new approach. It’s him Who has seen the potential of Georgian rugbymen, especially the front, and created a bridge with France to allow them to come up with you. ”
Coach Globe-Trotter – After Beziers, he practiced in Morocco and Tunisia – Claude Saurel remembers his first contacts. “A guy came to interbelle me, saying,” I come from a small country in the Caucasus, we are passionate about rugby. We would like you to make an audit at home, “says the Biterrois technician now 73 years old. I went there in the summer of 1995, they came out of a civilian war with the independence of Abkhazia and D South Ossetia], the country was upset, and I found myself in a room, in front of a dozen people with an interpreter and a great painting on which was written: “Rugby: Lesson # 1”. And it was Party! “
The” Major Role “of Saurel Clare
Noting the nascent craze of the country for his sport, the French coach is working for the task. Despite the shouting lack of infrastructure. “It had just come out of the civil war, the country was destroyed, no electricity, no gas … There was no way to train for the athletes”, remembers George Tchumburidze, long national technical director of the Georgian rugby. At times, the national team is forced to train on car parks or in public gardens; So they decide to send their players to get on in France, taking advantage of the networks of their coach.
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