57 years old, a fine age. Provins rugby club is about mates first and foremost, those of the past, of the present and of the future.

Rugby missionaries in cereal-growing country

The story of rugby in Provins, in Seine-et-Marne, begins in Gouaix, in 1969. Léon Fauvet, a PE teacher who later became an inspector for youth and sport, set up the club with the help of other teachers including the well-read Alain Rieunier, who was its first president. There were also Lucien Sauvat, Claude Montès… Straight afterwards came Jean-Claude Martin, another PE teacher, with Michel Marchand and Robert Arizo.

PE teachers acting as rugby missionaries in that strange land of cereals and sugar beet… They kept the flame alive, because it could very easily have gone out.

The southern graft that took east of Paris

The club took shape around southerners who had moved up to the eastern edge of Paris, coming from Perpignan, Toulouse, often teachers or servicemen such as Alain Casazajou, who was from Tarbes. The well-read one, incidentally, composed a poem that tells the story of the club.

Contacts and links with the school world helped prime the membership pump. Marchand, Arizo, Martin, Bodot, Basset: players, officials, volunteers and coach-recruiters in their own schools and sixth forms, that was the bedrock.

You must not forget the school in Villiers-Saint-Georges and its PE teacher Alex Barbier, stresses the club's long-standing figure and historian Alain Bitsch. He brought a lot of youngsters into rugby at Gouaix and then at Provins, and he won a lot of school, county and regional titles.

Alain Cadet, of Catalan stock, the Demaison brothers whose father had played hooker at Sarlat, Joël Sageloly, aptly nicknamed the Catalan, and so many others: the history of rugby at Gouaix and then at Provins is, in fact, the story of a southern sporting graft on the eastern side of Paris.

The slow death, then a rebirth through nuclear power

And then came a slow death, right up to the doors closing for two seasons, in the 1990s. Fortunately, the flame did not go out, thanks… to nuclear power and the Nogent-sur-Seine power station, where Serge Breton set up a rugby section, to keep the game going in the area.

Christian Mazurek, a long-serving Gouaix lock, worked for EDF at Nogent-sur-Seine. What followed felt natural, as the man himself explains:

One day, the older lot moved on and we had to find a president, and the one who was not paying attention in the meeting is the one who became president.

That was in 1996. Mazurek stayed in the job for 20 years. And he is still very close to the club, not least through the international youth tournament.

A junior section had to be created to secure the club’s future at last. As Provins had far more inhabitants than Gouaix, it was only natural that the medieval town took in the new activity. The president remembers:

At the start, Madame Gayraud, the deputy mayor for sport, reckons it was her finest achievement.

The international tournament, the club’s DNA

These days the club’s DNA is its U14 and U16 international tournament, created almost by accident, with plenty of goodwill and a touch of madness. Today, Provins can boast of having hosted British, Irish, Russian and even New Zealand clubs and national sides.

On which subject, a tasty anecdote: by mixing up “Provence” and “Provins”, more than one team has been gently caught out, but without ever having cause to regret it.

The club has also taken 150 children in all on three summer-holiday tours to South Africa.

As I worked for EDF, we even managed to get the international Thomas Lombard along, smiles Mazurek. It was pretty brilliant, the kids' eyes were shining.

Passing it on to the next lot

Rugby at Gouaix and then at Provins is a matter of passing things on, a matter of time going by, a matter of friendships that outlast the years. A thought for Jean-Pierre “Pedro”…

The pass has been given to Mathieu Potier, Miguel Dublanc, Edouard Merré, and others who dream of hosting a South American side. But Mazurek and Bitsch are still there in support, not far away.