Christophe Pommier, 48, club technical adviser, CTC for the Pays de la Loire league: the background? An accountant who discovered rugby at 21!.

This Saumur man caught the rugby bug and took advantage of the Covid period  to add to his qualifications: in 2021 the state diploma was added to the state certificate he had obtained in 2003. “I started rugby at Deux-la-Fontaine, and then I was employed by the Saumur club in the 2000s, a bit by chance to begin with”, Christophe remembers, amused. “I started rugby very late, in 1998, I played handball, and a club was set up, and I liked watching it and I enjoyed it. It happened like that really, by chance, I never went through a rugby school, for instance.”

So much for the early days: a club is set up in quatrième série, the atmosphere is good fun, the cliché so very true, and it all works. And so Christophe improves and two years later signs for the Saumur club, who play in Fédérale 3. 

“And so I’m offered a paid job, I accept and I start the qualifications. And the people around me found it funny at first, and a bit unusual, because I don’t come from a rugby family, no sporty brothers, no sporty parents. They said to me, ‘go on, it’s funny, we’ll come and watch you on Sundays!’ I was a bit of a family attraction, really.”

 Today Christophe is no longer employed by a club but by  the league, and he looks after seven clubs in his area, a little under 1,000 registered players in all, and some twenty  thousand kilometres a year to visit Cholet, Doué La Fontaine, Saumur, Touché-aux-Bances and Brillon for the Maine-et-Loire. And two clubs in the Sarthe, La Flèche and Marsan.

The starting idea for a CTC is to be the go-to person to help run the club and support it in all its projects, whether that means a grant, the paperwork or the essential point, coach education.

Does he miss the pitch? “Yes, for one big reason above all. I’ve been a CTC for 16 years now, and with everything we know these days, I think I’d be a better coach than I was before, and that’s why I miss the pitch. Because as it is you sprinkle a bit here and there, you work with a squad now and again, but you never have them for a whole season, and that day-to-day management of men and women, that’s what I miss. We don’t coach the way we did in the 2000s, thankfully. And it’s getting better. And the Grand Ouest is improving at a rate of knots. It’s incredible.”

And then there is a fine double source of pride: two sons, Pierre, 20, playing Fédérale 3 at Le Mans, and Mathis, 17, junior Nationale at Angers. Two versatile half-backs. 

“Managing to keep my boys in the game and to make them even more passionate than I am, that’s one of my greatest achievements”, Christophe says with delight.