“You’ve been gone ten years to buy a cake slice; a trip out is a trip out, but you could have come home a bit sooner…” That is more or less the summary of the curious destiny of Mariano Benzano, Uruguayan, president of Rugby Club de Saint-Brieuc since 2024. Explanations from the Montevideo native: “Actually, I started rugby at the age of 12 or 13, then came the national age-group sides, and when I was 22, I wanted to get to know France after studying it and learning the language at the French lycée.” His parents, who did not approve of the regime of the time, had done everything they could to open Mariano up to the outside world; so much so, and so well, that the odd bird crossed the Atlantic: “I got my baccalaureate, I’d started studying law but I told myself that going to spend a year or two in France wouldn’t be a bad thing. A contact near Chateauroux set it all off, the president of a rugby club. “Basically, I came over for a little sabbatical year, to take a break from my studies, but one year, two years…” Next came the club at Vendôme, where the solid number 8 (1.90m, 120kg) hung up his boots and met Brittany and love: “I met a Breton woman, and that’s how I’ve been settled in Brittany, in Saint-Brieuc, for 15 years.”

Inevitably, the club, founded in 1963, got its hooks into the Uruguayan, and what followed is the story of a finger caught in the machinery, with no way back: “I played at number 8, and over the years I started dropping back into the second row, and my last five years were straight into the front row!” Then came the rugby school he looks after, 160 kids including around forty girls, not bad for a club with 400 members across all its sections: the rugby school, the youth section, the senior men’s and women’s competitive sides, five-a-side rugby and health rugby.

And then the presidency, a smooth succession from a remarkable man: Lucas Colné. A coach should be a driving force, shouldn’t he? He was a driving president! “I try to do my best after him. When I took over the presidency, it was because Lucas couldn’t carry on, since his job at the Côtes-d’Armor departmental rugby committee stopped him, he couldn’t do both things, so they offered it to me and, as I was in charge of the rugby school, I accepted.” With humour and a commitment that has never wavered: “All I’ve done is carry on that momentum, trying to make sure everyone is happy. But sometimes it isn’t easy when you have 400 members, sometimes that can very quickly turn into 400 problems!” Or rather 400 exploits, like the one pulled off by RC Saint-Brieuc with the double training camp of Vannes and then Toulouse at Ploufragran (on the outskirts of Saint-Brieuc) last August, followed by the friendly between the two clubs at the Roudourou in Guingamp: “Yes, it was brilliant. We provided the ball boys, and we were able to give a real thrill to several boys and girls from our youth section.” And then there were the autographs from Antoine Dupont, the photos, memories to last a lifetime for lots of under-15s. 

Mariano’s method? The smile, even if sometimes, just like on a pitch, you have to “show yourself”: “Sometimes you have to bang the table a bit, sometimes you have to hand out a few hugs. We try to make sure things go as well as possible.” All the sections, the rugby school, the youth section, the women’s section, F-18, the health section, five-a-side rugby and so on, are moving towards as much autonomy as possible, by giving volunteer leads real responsibility. At the rugby school, for example, the club tries to make sure that in every age group there are parents who can pass on information, prepare the snacks, sort out the car-sharing links and so on. “It’s to try to make sure it isn’t always the same people doing all the jobs. It’s starting to work, it eases the weight of work for everyone.” 

In the end, it is not 400 members but close to 2,000 people who are touched by Rugby Club Saint-Brieuc.