Racing Metro 92 Paris

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Racing Métro 92
Full name	Racing Métro 92
Founded	2001
Location	Colombes, France
Ground	Stade Olympique Yves-du-Manoir
Capacity	6,500
President	Jacky Lorenzetti
Coach	Philippe Benetton and  Didier Camberabero
League	Pro D2
2005-06	13th
Home colours		Away colours

Racing Metro 92 Paris is a French rugby union club that was formed in 2001 with the collaboration of the Racing Club de France and US Metro. "92" is the number of Hauts-de-Seine, the département in the western suburbs of Paris where they play, and whose council gives financial backing to the club. They currently compete in the second division of French rugby, Rugby Pro D2, and play out of the Stade Yves-du-Manoir stadium at Colombes, where France played for several decades.

Contents 1 History 2 Identity 3 Honours 4 Finals results 4.1 French championship 4.2 Challenge Yves du Manoir 4.3 Coupe de l'Espérance 5 Famous players 6 External links

[edit] History

Racing Club was established in 1882 (it became Racing Club de France in 1885) as an athletics club, one of the first in France. New sections were regularly added thereafter (17 as of 2006, accounting for some 20,000 members). A rugby section was founded in 1890, which became an immediate protagonist of the early French championship, to which until 1898 only Parisian teams were invited. In 1892, the first ever domestic championship was organized, with only two teams who met in a one-off match. The match was played on March 20 and the Racing Club defeated Stade Français 4 points to 3 to win the inaugural French championship.

Both clubs would contest the championship game the following season as well, though in 1893 it would be Stade who would win the event, defeating the Racing Club 7 points to 3. Stade went onto dominate the following years and the Racing Club would make their next final appearance in the 1898 season, where they met Stade yet again. However the title was awarded after a round-robin with 6 clubs. Stade Français won with 10 points, Racing came in second with 6.

Racing contested the 1900 season final against the Stade Bordelais club, as provincial clubs had been allowed to compete in 1899. Racing easily won the match, defeating Stade Bordelais 37 points to 7. The two clubs would meet again in the 1902 championship game, where Racing would again win, 6 points to nil. A decade passed until the Racing Club made another championship final, which would be on March 31, 1912, where they would play Toulouse in Toulouse. They lost the match 8 points to 6.

Due to World War I the French championship was replaced with a competition called the Coupe de l'Espérance. The Racing Club won the competition in 1918, defeating FC Grenoble 22 points to 9. Normal competition resumed for the 1920 season. That season the Racing Club made their first final since 1912, though they lost 8 to 3 to Stadoceste Tarbais, a club from the Pyrénées.

After the 1920 season, the Racing Club would not win any championships for a number of years. In 1931 they created the Challenge Yves du Manoir competition. In the 1950s the club had some success, making their first championship final in 30 years, losing to Castres Olympique, 11 points to 8, becoming runners-up in the Challenge Yves du Manoir and winning the Challenge Rutherford in the 1952 season. After losing the 1957 final to FC Lourdes, the club then won the championship in the 1959 season, defeating Stade Montois 8 points to 3.

The Racing Club would next play in the championship final in the 1987 season, where they met RC Toulon at Parc des Princes in Paris. Toulon won the match 15 points to 12. Three seasons later the Racing Club defeated SU Agen 22 to 12 in Paris, capturing their first title since the 1959 season.

But in the wake of the 1990 title, Racing Club had a hard time adapting to the professional era and started to decline, until they were relegated to the Division 2 at the end of the 1995-96 season. They jumped back to the top tier in 1998 but went down again in 2000 and have been playing in Division 2 ever since. In 2001 the rugby section split off from the general sports club to merge with the rugby section of US Metro, the Paris public transport sports club, to form the current professional concern, known as Racing Metro 92. Both Racing Club de France and US Metro retained their other amateur general sports sections.

Racing Metro 92’s president is Jacky Lorenzetti, who heads a giant real estate company called Foncia. The board intends to bring the club into the Top 14 within the next two years and into the H Cup by 2011. Racing Club’s main problem is the one encountered by all sports clubs in Paris, following : gates are extremely low (barely 1,000 for regular season matches). In addition, when Racing Club started to decline in the 1990s, the place as Paris #1 rugby club was taken by its arch-rival of the late 19th century, Stade Français, which needed ten years to build a faithful fanbase enabling it to compete at the top. Therefore many are sceptical as to the eventual success of Racing Club which might well become an artificial institution in an “empty shell”. It seems strange that such a big city as Paris could not accommodate more than one rugby club, when London has four in England’s top division only, but sports is still not a natural part of French life, especially in Paris.

After 2003 the Challenge Yves du Manoir has been taken over by Racing Club as a youth competition for under 15s clubs. Racing Club de France provided 76 players to the national team, including 12 captains. It is only second to Stade Toulousain (almost 100) in that category. Three Racingmen played in France’s first international match against the All Blacks on Jan. 1, 1906. Laurent Cabannes, a France flanker, also played for Harlequin F.C..

[edit] Identity

In France, early organised sports was a matter for rich people. Racing Club became the epitome of the exclusive athletics club, located in the heart of the Bois de Boulogne in the affluent western district of Paris, modelled after the fashionable English sports organisations, whose ideal of mens sana in corpore sano (a healthy mind in a healthy body) appealed very much to its members. Many of them were actually aristocrats, and four nobles took part in the first championship final. Although less aristocrats belong to the club now, it is very complicated to join it, and the identity and image is one of exclusivity.

Racing Club has also always defended the amateur spirit of the game and of sports in general. The creation of the Challenge Yves du Manoir responded to this ideal in a period (late 1920s-early 1930s) where French rugby was marred by violence and creeping professionalism. Yves du Manoir symbolized the romantic side of rugby, its carefree dimension, le jeu pour le jeu (playing for the fun of playing).

In a very different vein, much later, in the 1980s, a talented generation of players revived the club’s spirit. They carried it back the top of French rugby thanks to their performances on the pitch, but they also wanted to bring the fun back into the game, in order to take rugby out of its Parisian anonimity. They did so through a combination of serious football, humour and self-mockery. Their famous antics were invented by the club’s backs (including France flyhalf Franck Mesnel and France wing Jean-Baptiste Lafond) who once played a game in Bayonne with berets on their heads as a tribute to the tradition of attacking play of the Basque club Aviron Bayonnais. As members of a gang which they called le show bizz, they played other games with black make-up on, hair dyed yellow, wigs, long white trousers to look like players of old. Their best prank was when they played the 1987 final against RC Toulon with a pink bowtie. Just before kick-off, Lafond presented French president François Mitterrand, who always attended the national final, with one of those bowties. They played the 1990 final with the same bowties and at half-time, they had a drink of champagne on the pitch to recover from the efforts of the first half—and won the club’s last title so far! They were also famous for their love of nightlife, which attracted a lot of criticism, especially because so many of them had international duties with France. All this contributed to the image of Racing Club as an eccentric institution, but these players have also been seen as trail blazers for Stade Français’s president Max Guazzini, who a few years later, took up the provocative (such as the use of the pink colour) and imaginative spirit to boost his club’s image and shake off the conservative traditionalism of French rugby.

As the club hit the front pages, five players capitalised on the success and went on to start a now famous sportswear clothing business called Eden Park (after the famous Auckland stadium) in 1988. It uses a pink bowtie as its logo and has established itself as a leading brand in France thanks to its combination of elegance and eccentricity (pink, of course, and sky-blue are among the favourites), competing with the likes of Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren Lacoste and Marlboro Classics. Thus Eden Park’s expensive rugby polo shirts are a must for French rugby fans. Their development was boosted when the French Federation chose them as official suppliers of France’s formal wear in 1998. The company boasts 270 outlets throughout the world. One of them is in Richmond upon Thames as Eden Park developed a partnership with Harlequin FC. Another one is in Cardiff city centre. In 2003, Eden Park became the official supplier of the Welsh Rugby Union’s formal wear for the World Cup in Australia. Eden Park is also directly involved in the Racing Metro club since one of its founders, Eric Blanc—who happens to be Franck Mesnel’s brother-in-law— is the club’s vice-president.

[edit] Honours

• French championship
  • Champion: 1892, 1900, 1902, 1959, 1990
  • Finalist: 1893, 1912, 1920, 1950, 1957, 1987
• Challenge Yves du Manoir
  • Finalist: 1952
• Coupe de l'Espérance
  • Champion : 1918
• Division One Group A2
  • Champion: 1998
• Challenge Rutherford
  • Finalist: 1952

[edit] Finals results

[edit] French championship

Date	Winner	Runner up	Score	Venue	Spectators
20 March 1892	Racing Club de France	Stade Français	4-3	Bagatelle, Paris	2.000
19 May 1893	Stade Français	Racing Club de France	7-3	Bécon-les-Bruyères	1.200
22 April 1900	Racing Club de France	Stade Bordelais UC	37-3	Levallois-Perret	1.500
23 March 1902	Racing Club de France	Stade Bordelais UC	6-0	Parc des Princes, Paris	1.000
31 March 1912	Stade Toulousain	Racing Club de France	8-6	Stade des Ponts Jumeaux, Toulouse	15.000
25 April 1920	Stadoceste Tarbais	Racing Club de France	8-3	Route du Médoc, Le Bouscat	20.000
16 April 1950	Castres Olympique	Racing Club de France	11-8	Stade des Ponts Jumeaux, Toulouse	25.000
26 May 1957	FC Lourdes	Racing Club de France	16-13	Stade de Gerland, Lyon	30.000
24 May 1959	Racing Club de France	Stade Montois	8-3	Parc Lescure, Bordeaux	31.098
22 May 1987	RC Toulon	Racing Club de France	15-12	Parc des Princes, Paris	48.000
26 May 1990	Racing Club de France	SU Agen	22-12 AP	Parc des Princes, Paris	45.069

[edit] Challenge Yves du Manoir

Year	Winner	Score	Runner-up
1952	Section Paloise	round robin	Racing Club de France

[edit] Coupe de l'Espérance

Date	Winner	Score	Runner-up
1918	Racing Club de France	22-9	FC Grenoble

[edit] Famous players

• Yves du Manoir
• Laurent Cabannes
• Michel Crauste
• Adolphe Jaureguy
• Robert Paparemborde
• Alexandre Pharamond
• Frantz Reichel
• Jean-Pierre Rives

[edit] External links

• Racing-Métro92
• RC.France (sports club)
• RC France (Rugby)
• US.Métro
• Eden Park clothing