From gentlemen to players – and beyond

From gentlemen to players – and beyond - Sports

Written by Riviera Reporter

Patrick Middleton reflects on the fate of the British sporting tradition in the South of France.

The title of Patrick Howarth’s history of the British presence on the Côte d’Azur – When The Riviera Was Ours, now nearly thirty years old – was intended to be only slightly ironical. Within its pages there is ample evidence that those who settled, or even merely visited, the South of France behaved as the Victorian British seemingly did everywhere, regarding any place in which they settled as a sort of unofficial crown colony. They had, they believed, two benefits to confer on lesser breeds: their religion and their sport. Although the latter travelled much better than the former, in the British mind of pre-1914 vintage the two were closely allied. Lord Harris, as Governor of Bombay, claimed that the moral values instilled by cricket would cure the Indians of Hinduism and so render their conversion much easier. Here on the Riviera one Anglican cleric argued that rugger would have “a healthy influence on those brought up as papists”.

“Bible and Ball”
Over the decades the Church of England’s activity has been steadily reduced and none of its current representatives on the Coast would see “converting” the French, by Bible and Ball, as part of his mission. On the other hand, the sports the British introduced, with the exception of cricket, have gone from strength to strength among the natives. For a long time, however, the British largely played their games within their own community. The Cannes Cricket Club, established in 1887, never had a French member and is now long defunct. The dry soil made a satisfactory wicket almost impossible; in addition, the pitch was next to an ostrich farm and the birds would regularly run off with the ball.

Golf made its appearance in the early eighteen-nineties. The possibility of round-the-year play brought many British families down for the winter but the game made slow progress among the French. As late as 1921, when Nice played Cannes in a twelve-a-side match, there was only one non-British player. Much the same was true of lawn tennis – devised, in more or less the form we know it now, in England in 1874 by Major Wingfield who gave it the uncatchy (and short-lived) name of “spairistike”. The Nice Lawn Tennis Club was long dominated by the British. In the nineteen-hundreds a rare French president was Charles Lenglen, father of Suzanne, a future Wimbledon champion. The Menton club, founded in 1904, simply refused to allow the French to join. Yachting, too, was introduced to the Riviera by the British, and in the eighteen-seventies Cannes was awarded the patronising title of “the Cowes of the Mediterranean”. Rugger, of course, is another British import. Its once reputed inventor, William Webb Ellis – his role is now contested – is buried in Menton where he died a typically Victorian early death from consumption.

Happily, and again excepting cricket, “British” games have long moved out of their expat ghetto. These days anglophones who take them up will find themselves playing alongside French enthusiasts. This is a welcome development since there is no better way of integrating with a new community than finding shared interests. “It’s more a person-to-person thing,” one rugger player told me. “There’s not the same post-match social life I used to enjoy in Leeds, but I’ve got to know a couple of the guys really well.” Of course, France remains France and becoming an active sportsman can entail an elaborate bureaucratic procedure (absent in Monaco, by the way). Those who aren’t “licensed” can’t play. There’s no avoiding it. Usually, though, when a new member joins a club he’ll get help with the paperwork.

“A darker side ...”
There’s a darker side to this history. The old games are being enthusiastically played but today’s adepts are far from accepting the old standards of conduct. In both rugger and soccer amateur games here are notorious for foul play; manners on the golf course and the tennis court have notably worsened. As a British-born local golf pro put it to me, “Most people these days act on Ben Hogan’s saying: nice guys never win.”

From Reporter 110 - Aug/Sept 2005

Set as favourite

Bookmark

Trackback(0)

TrackBack URI for this entry