This is the story of a woman from Marseille who went from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, a prop by trade, with a wrecked ankle but who keeps the rugby buzz alive through coaching, and the sea on her horizon.

“My name is Camille Caillol, I’m 25 and I played in the front row.” Camille took up rugby in 2008, at the age of eight, because her father was in rugby, he played, and so did her brother. From spending so much time along the touchline railings, she wanted to give it a go, and she fell into it head first.

Camille explains the journey:

I’m from the south of France, I’m from Marseille and I played from the age of eight until I moved up to the cadette age group at Aubagne. Then I spent three years at Marseille-Huveaune, which is now Marseille Rugby Méditerranée. After that, I absolutely wanted to play fifteens and Rugby Club Marseillais had a fifteens side in Fédérale 1. So I went there, where I played for almost four years.”

Then came Covid, the stop button, and the season was quickly halted.

Professional studies in marine biology took her to Lorient, sailing and the leisure boating industry. “I’d said I was only staying a year,” Camille smiles. “And in fact it turned out I had work, so I stayed, and I’m still at the same company where I did my placement.”

Now employed by the Morbihan port company, in Vannes, Camille manages 284 boat berths.

And then came the accident, a serious one. Camille explains:

“I’d never stopped, apart from a few minor injuries. And then last year, exactly a year ago, it was 24 November 2024, we were playing at Lannester, my foot stayed stuck in the ground, I was tackled by two players and my foot stayed stuck and it turned out I had ruptured four ankle ligaments: the tibiofibular, the anterior, the posterior, the membrane and the medial collateral…”

A horror story with disabling consequences even a year on. A shattered ankle and, from now on, a ban on playing rugby. But not on handing it on.

Emergency surgery on 20 December, painful, a month and a half stuck at home, two months of rehab as a day patient, almost four months to learn to walk again…

Camille is smiling all the same: “Things are much better now but, as a result, I’m no longer allowed to play rugby. And I’ve become a coach. Because I want to keep a foot in it, no pun intended. I made the decision last year to become a coach and go into training so I could coach the women.”

A federation-qualified educator, with the federal “optimisation” diploma to coach the over-18s. Camille currently coaches the RCV women, in both ten-a-side and fifteens. The group is thriving.

Camille has the last word:

“I arrived here four years ago, I didn’t know anyone and the first people I met were the rugby girls. I went on a ‘bonding weekend’ with them… We’ve got something stable, we get on really well, we communicate well.”