Have you got 5 minutes? That is how the interview began. Paulette, the memory and the soul of the Saint-Hilaire-de-Riez club, is going to give a great deal more than five minutes. Seventy-six years old, are we allowed to say her age? Too late!
“I’m actually going through my photos right now. I’m looking at pictures from when I set up the women’s team in 1992, there you go, where I’m playing with the girls, I’ve got photos here.” She played lock, in support, of course in support. Paulette has become an institution at Saint-Hilaire; you arrive at the clubhouse and you are in Paulette’s place: “The clubhouse, it’s my bar, it was the players who put me there.”
And today the young ones say it is a shame, they never put the date on it.
“Paulette, you knew my grandfather as a player, you knew my father as a player, and you know me as a player, that’s three generations of yours”, and there you have the handing down and the affection. Seventy-six years old since 13 December, player, volunteer, administrator… “I was already a volunteer when I was a player, I arrived in 1977. My daughter was born in 1973, and she says, mum, we’ve always known you at the rugby. In fact I had three children, my two daughters and rugby.” Ingrid and Jessica. Ingrid, the eldest, who turns 53 this year, and the little one who turns 48.
On the coach the players would get everyone singing Les Gens du Nord. And Jessica was in her carrycot… “Ah, it was marvellous”, Paulette smiles, “it was marvellous.”
But how did Paulette end up in rugby? Stilettos? Studs? “My first husband was the children’s coach, that’s where the women’s team came from, the first women’s tournament. So we’re in the years 1975 to 1977. There you go, the father of my children, who died in ’91. Then it was the club committee that said to me, ‘Paulette, in memory of your husband, we’re going to put on a women’s tournament.'” Different times, a different era: he was the only one who would accept girls in rugby… No other coach wanted to hear about girls playing rugby.
“Since he had his two daughters, he was the one who started taking them along to the ground”, Paulette remembers. He coached them, and the players who had children, who had daughters, followed Jean-Loup’s lead. And that is why the club committee decided to create the Jean Caillaud tournament at Whitsun.
The people running the club have changed, the friendship and the memories have stayed. The president said to me, recalls the club’s memory: “He said to me, listen Paulette, I’m looking for someone for the bar, because the people doing it are getting on, they don’t want to any more, they’re tired, so he was looking for someone, and I can just see you behind the bar. That was in 1976-1977, that’s 48 years! My daughters say to me, mum, that’ll be 50 years in 2026, blimey! Sorry! It’s marvellous, it’s marvellous.”
That devotion, that dedication was well worth a reward: the 7th arrondissement of Paris, a month ago… Paulette, visibly moved, remembers it perfectly: “Jean-Luc, the club president, called me and said ‘Paulette, we’re giving you this’, it was all of France from every region, it was marvellous.” Florian Grill, the FFR president, was there, along with vice-president Abdelatif Benazzi, to present the medal of the Fédération Française de Rugby.
One last dream, Paulette? “Antoine Dupont… meeting him is my dream…” Marvellous Paulette.
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