Damien Neveu still has not digested the announcement made on Tuesday 3 March. Despite having secured survival on the pitch, Niort, who play in Nationale, had announced they were filing for insolvency. A disaster for the team but also for the division, which had only just lost Tarbes in the same circumstances.

The 40-year-old general manager, a former scrum-half with Brive, La Rochelle and Colomiers, is on the front line of that decision. Angry, sad and floored, Damien Neveu nonetheless agreed to answer Ruck Zone‘s questions. With a certain plain speaking and, above all, a great deal of emotion.

The Chambray-les-Tours native (Indre-et-Loire) describes the catastrophic and precarious situation of the Niort players and staff, the near-impossible prospect of a takeover, and says above all that he needs to come up for air, having given everything to meet the sporting targets set at the start of the season. Interview.

RUCK ZONE. – A few days after the announcement of Niort’s insolvency filing, has the anger subsided?
Damien Neveu: We are still in the emotion of it. Everything is mixed up. We are living on the ruins we have left, because we had imagined plenty of scenarios during the season, but not this one. A lot of players are worried. Within the playing group, a lot of questions are being asked. And today we do not have many answers… It is still very much in everyone’s mind. Some still have a little hope that a buyer might come forward with a project. Others are more resigned. You have to face all that, it is not simple. You have to try to manage the emotions, to channel the different points of view and everything that can come out of that kind of situation.

Which feelings dominate?
We simply cannot understand it. We still feel a sense of injustice, too. On the sporting project, we have the feeling we did things professionally, fully committed to the objectives and the plans we were meant to control. The board was in denial because it had completely lost control. And we are the ones paying the direct consequences. That is not easy to accept.

And did you really see nothing coming?
The first signals go back three weeks. There was a very slight two-day delay in the payment of salaries. That made us prick up our ears a little. But being paid on the 6th instead of the 4th does not always mean something. Very concretely, at the end of a training session, two players came to ask me whether I had heard anything about financial problems at the club. I had got wind of absolutely nothing. So I told them no, that I had had no negative feedback at all. They told me they had heard things through sponsors. That is when it started to make us wonder. I went straight to the president to ask him for explanations. He immediately denied the information, saying they were false rumours, that there had been a simple cash-flow squeeze but that everything was well under control. I asked him to come and talk to the players quickly about the state of the club’s finances, precisely to stop it taking on proportions in the dressing room. He did so the next morning, and we left it there. Three weeks later, on the Saturday we were celebrating survival secured on the pitch, he called us in to tell us the situation was far more serious than expected. And that if we wanted to give the association a chance of being saved, the company had to file for insolvency.

Has the board been in touch with you since?
No, of course not. Let’s not kid ourselves, we have closed ranks among ourselves, players and staff. And we try to pick up information here and there.

Are you still under contract? What is your contractual situation?
We are still employees under an employment contract. At the moment the company is insolvent. So our February salaries have not been paid. We are no longer being paid. The next step in the process is that yesterday they were due to file the insolvency papers with the Niort commercial court. The hearing should take place next Tuesday, and at the end of it the court should order a judicial liquidation. Then it is the standard liquidation procedure, with a court-appointed administrator who will take over the file and carry out the redundancies. With all the administrative steps that entails.

The only way for the club to be saved is for a buyer to come forward before Tuesday with a solid case…
There does indeed have to be a solid project with money behind it. Because the debts will have to be taken on, and then there have to be funds for a takeover project. Given the timeframe and the timing, it is almost impossible. You do not put a project together in a week. That is why I think the board misled us. There was probably a chance to anticipate and perhaps open up the share capital to shareholders, to people who might still have been able to save the situation. As it is, we are facing an ultimatum that is very short.

It seems completely mad to imagine that a buyer could come forward in such a short space of time

Damien Neveu

What is the mood among your players and your colleagues? Finding another club at all costs?
It really is case by case. Obviously some players are trying to bounce back, even though you have to be made redundant before you can consider a new employment contract. You also have to wait for all the administrative side to be done. We are falling into a precariousness that is terrible. I have said it before, but we are paid as Nationale coaches and players. With no disrespect to the professional world and to the elite such as Top 14, we do not earn those salaries. Today I have players living on minimum federal contracts. Lads living on 1,500 euros a month, with rent sometimes covered by the club. Right now they have neither that 1,500 euros to eat with, nor their rent being paid. Which potentially means that in a month’s time they have no housing, sometimes no car and no money. You have to imagine what that means for them. It is the same for us. We are a bit older, so we have a bit more perspective. But it is brutal.

For now I am not well at all. I need to recover, to refocus on myself a little. Today I do not want to hear about rugby any more. I feel I have given a great deal this year. With a lot of personal sacrifice and commitment, only to end up unable even to see through what we had started. We feel injustice and betrayal.

Mental health comes up often in these discussions. Has anything been put in place to help you?
For now we are mainly on the legal support side. On the mental side, I have asked the group to be vigilant, to look out for each one of us, for any signs that might appear. I have asked everyone, if they are going through a difficult or delicate moment, to talk about it and speak up. But today there is no provision at that level. That is regrettable because, as I say, we are falling into a precariousness that can be genuinely worrying and dangerous.

You have no doubt seen or heard the statements of other Nationale club officials, such as that of Jean-Baptiste Aldigé (the Nice president, speaking to Rugbyrama, editor’s note)… In your position, what do you make of it?
What do I make of it? That it is typical of the man. He is focused on his own little self and his own sporting stake. Careful, I understand it and I hear it. He has his objectives. But behind these situations there are above all men and women who are going to find themselves in precarious circumstances. That is 60 people, potentially 60 families, left in the shit. Talking about the table and all that, fine, I understand, it is true that rugby matters. But this is not about rugby. This is about life, about everyone’s basic needs. He may not have money problems, so it does not really speak to him. But either way there are young lads who are going to be struggling. That is not what worries him, in any case. Then again, everyone acts according to their own sensitivity. I have mine. He has his. Everyone has their priorities.

I have two little boys who give me a lot of love. I am going to devote myself to them, to that, and rebuild myself too, to try to bounce back personally and professionally.

Damien Neveu

You have been living a wonderful human adventure, with promotion last season, survival this year and benchmark performances against fine teams…
You have summed it all up. We had managed to create something different. An energy within the group, within the staff, that was very strong. With a singular solidarity. This group has been through very hard, very painful moments, with the tragedy they suffered last year (the death of full-back Quentin Gobet, killed by a reckless driver, editor’s note). That had cemented the relationships. I inherited the hard core of that group with a new adventure this year. It was strengthened and amplified by the season’s results, with many great emotions, great moments in relation to the target we had set ourselves. To see the story end like this… It is hard to accept. When you put a lot of heart into it, you inevitably fall from a great height. Life goes on. We will have to bounce back and get up again.

At times like these, is the most important thing to refocus on family and friends?
That is exactly it. In tough times, and when you have been let down by people or by relationships, I think it is important to go back to basics. To think a little about yourself when you have given a lot to others. You have to try to refocus on ourselves, on our values, on the people we can count on, lean on, who give it back to us and who show us trust. We have lost some of that here. In any case, what we asked the players all season was to show resilience. To be capable, not of accepting it, but of dealing with this episode. Life goes on. I have two little boys who give me a lot of love. I am going to devote myself to them, to that, and rebuild myself too, to try to bounce back personally and professionally.