In the Lanen family, rugby was never a project. Still less a career plan.

So when Hugues talks about his three sons, he never starts with their clubs, their performances or their ambitions. No, he talks first about their childhood. Training sessions in the rain, the kilometres swallowed up in the car, weekends given over to the oval ball.

“It is a story that began like so many others“, on a pitch in the Lozère, with three kids chasing a ball that was bigger than they were. “Kids” with scraped knees, the urge to play and a father already on the touchline.

Talent is not enough

“All three of them started very young, at the age of 4 or 5“, he says. The twins, Clément and Thibaud (27), he coached himself in their first steps. The youngest, the baby of the family (1.98m all the same), Rémi, 20, would follow the same path a few years later.

At the time, nobody really imagined what would follow. Nor did he. “I found it hard to believe“, he admits today. Because in Mende, the smallest département in the country by population, paths to professional rugby are not exactly plentiful. Because talent is never enough. Because the step up is huge. But the three boys moved forward with the same determination, carried by a passion that went far beyond family ambitions.

Three journeys, one common foundation

Today the paths have gone their separate ways. One is still at Clermont, another is continuing his career at Périgueux, while Rémi is pushing hard with the Espoirs at ASM. Three almost identical journeys. Three destinies forged on the same foundation.

“Beyond that, they already loved sport. They tried everything. Handball, football… Then they chose rugby because they enjoyed it. They watched every match on television, they took an interest in every player“, says father Hugues.

Rugby was never imposed. “It came naturally.” One thing, on the other hand, was never up for debate. Competition.

Pétanque as a competition

“Even playing pétanque, they had to win all the time. Always competition, always“, the former rugby player also remembers. Hugues smiles as he tells those stories. The twins were forever winding each other up. The slightest challenge turned into a battle. An energy that was sometimes hard to channel, but that would shape their character.

Even so, this father refuses to reduce his children to their performances.

What makes him proudest appears on no stats sheet. “Above all it is that they stay as they are. Serious, diligent, hard-working, respectful of all our values. For me, that is the most important thing in life.“

Values

The word “values” comes up often when he speaks. Values that smell of the Lozère. In the Lanen household, they talk as much about hunting, fishing and nature as about rugby. The boys now live a long way from home, but they come back whenever they can. “Three or four times a year, sometimes more when the calendar allows it“.

“They have always kept those values from back home. We are a very close family. Even their friends in rugby have the same values. Nature, hunting, fishing… They care enormously about it.” The top level, then, has never wiped out their roots. And Hugues quietly makes sure of it.

Parents and sacrifices

He still racks up long hours on the road to watch them play. Clermont one weekend. Périgueux the next. Then somewhere else again. Some 35,000 km a year. “Every weekend we do one match, then another. For a child to make it in that world, you need parents behind him who look after him. That’s what we’re here for.“

Behind children’s success stories, there are often invisible parents. Alarm clocks going off at dawn. Sacrifices that will never make the headlines. Even when he mentions his wife, Hugues talks about a collective adventure. At the start, she discovered a world whose demands she could not measure. Then she understood that professional rugby knows neither weekends nor holidays.

The whole family adapts. Without ever complaining.

“You don’t understand a thing”

Naturally, the Lanens are not spared the teasing. When the father tries to analyse a match, his sons give him no respite. “They tell me ‘You don’t understand a thing, you didn’t play at the top level’.” He bursts out laughing as he recounts those exchanges. He, the former Rodez player, happily takes the joke. It is part of those conversations that belong only to families where rugby is lived right into the living room.

In those three boys who have never forgotten the little club in Mende where it all began. In that visceral attachment to RCML, which they keep defending even from a distance. In that loyalty to a land, to a family and to principles their father passed on without any big speeches. Hugues cares about it. He wants people never to forget the club that developed them, the one where it all started.

Family life

A few days away from becoming a grandfather, with the imminent arrival of Clément’s first child, Hugues now looks at the future differently. His wish comes down to a single sentence. “That they make a success of their life as rugby players and their family life.“

Rugby may yet bring them more fine wins. Perhaps titles. Perhaps new adventures. But if you ask Hugues Lanen today what he considers his finest success, the answer lies neither in a list of honours nor on a team sheet.

It can be read in that “family that has stayed close despite the kilometres, the contracts and the careers“.

Three sons who became rugby players. And, above all, three men whose father taught them that you can run a very long way without ever losing the road home.