Rugby, a philosophy of contact

Interview by Julien Charnay.

Christopher Dominici: Since the 1990s, in France, a new perspective on rugby has emerged. It’s no longer portrayed as a showdown between brutes, where the most aggressive and baddest win. The practice of rugby has evolved. Everything has changed, from technique to aesthetics. With the professionalisation and globalisation of the sport, it has become much more of a television event. The World Cup, for which more than two million tickets have already been sold, marks the advent of this transformation – we’re now quite far from the days of my debut, in Toulon. I started in a very atypical club which cultivated warrior values. In 1997, I met Max Guazzini, president of the Stade Français de Paris, a club which had the ambition of becoming French champions. I signed straight away. At the beginning, we played in front of 2000 people. And then the club opened its doors to a new public, namely thanks to that “Stadium Gods” calendar, which showed rugby players undressed... This changed people’s perception of us, namely that of women.

Catherine Kintzler: If a woman like myself, a philosopher, became a supporter of Stade Français, it’s because, beyond the quality of the team, something changed. I had long been interested and even passionate about rugby. But I didn’t dare go to a match. I followed them on TV, through the mediation of the screen and the commentator. What is this metamorphosis of which Christophe Dominici speaks? The old language of rugby, with its age-old Herculean legends, somehow linked up with what is more sophisticated in modernity. To describe this, I find the term “glitter” too superficial. It’s a whole set of gestures, a hypermodern way of staging the body, which was integrated. As for the shirts, the Stade Français dared to choose pink and flowery patterns instead of stripes! This spirit has recently freed me. The first time I saw you arrive on the pitch “in real life” was during the Paris-Perpignan match on May 13, 2007: the Stade Français was wearing a tight-fitting, fluorescent pink jersey. And for the warm-up, you were doing passes without the ball. You appeared to me like dancers. It was like watching choreography. I was in awe. These shirts engage a relationship with the body, whose silhouette they espouse. And as for the colour pink, that takes some daring! I felt involved, not just seduced.

‘Today, I go to the stadium like I go to the opera, with the desire to attend a high-level spectacle’

—Catherine Kintzler

C. D.: I remember very well the first match that we played in pink. It was in Perpignan. As captain, I entered first, with my teammates behind me. We were treated to a huge ruckus of whistles and jeers! And then, gradually, the jersey came to be accepted and even acclaimed by those who first whistled at us. The Stade Français had anticipated this junction that took place between fashion and rugby. To bring in a new audience, rugby embraced a culture of show.

C. K. : And it has been successful. Today, I go to the stadium like I go to the opera, with the desire to attend a high-level spectacle.

C. D. : We’re lucky to have a very different audience from that of football. It’s because the spirit of rugby is much less stressful than that of football. Every Saturday, at the Parc des Princes [the home stadium of PSG football club], football takes on the appearance of a war zone. Violence begets violence.

C. K.: One of the reasons for my philosophical interest in rugby is that it’s a game where the relationship between what is allowed and what is forbidden isn’t simplistic and childish. The foul is integrated into the game. There can be an all-out fight, but the violence is tamed. It’s present but it’s contained, not repressed. As a result, there’s no backlash of repressed impulses. In football, since violence is forbidden and repressed on the field, it resurfaces at times, between th…