The local newspaper headlined yesterday: “Rugby – RNCA in the waiting room.” With all due respect to the great regional daily, Nice Premium prefers this headline: ‘The RNCA under the oxygen tent’ as the club’s situation is dramatic with a confirmed sports relegation to Federal 3 for financial reasons and the Damocles sword of the club’s dissolution that the Court could deliberate on March 19th next. A real oval nightmare!
Nice Premium has extensively covered this slow agony with a script written long ago between some people’s inadequacies and others’ ambitions, egos and conspiracies, mentors and former local glories, power games and dirty tricks, saving angels and cheaters… In short, a whole range of characters that even William Shakespeare, for whom fantasy was by no means lacking, could have assembled in one of his plays.
This is where we stand today. With the uncertainty that the main team will travel to Châteaurenard next Sunday, the Pitchounettes to Grenoble while there is still no final decision on the maintenance of the Baie des Anges Tournament scheduled for April 1st (Sic), a reference in the world of French rugby schools!
Hence the stance of the municipal opposition with its leader Patrick Allemand attacking Christian Estrosi and his deputy for sports, Gilles Veissière, accused of being responsible, directly or indirectly, for the situation as it is known.
Act of accusation that, after a long chronology of facts (see box), ends with direct and burning questions that go straight to the problem: Was the City Hall aware of facts that highlighted from the start the inconsistency of the Tordo-Deffins project and therefore could have been complicit in a failure with the serious consequences that can easily be imagined?
Here is what Patrick Allemand is asking:
– Why did Christian Estrosi and Gilles Veissière support the Tordo-Deffins project while being perfectly informed of Mr. Deffins’ track record, leading Nice rugby to Federal 3, despite an extravagance of taxpayer money?
- Why did Gilles Veissière reject the takeover offer from Pascal Coste, a Nice entrepreneur passionate about rugby, who succeeded in Montauban in bringing the club back to the Top 14, who presented guarantees, is at the helm of a booming company, and brought a pool of investors?
In conclusion: “Christian Estrosi and Gilles Veissière owe explanations to the taxpayers of Nice”.
In fact, the City Hall has already responded a few weeks ago with a statement published by Nice Matin, ensuring complete neutrality in the club’s life and denying having had an active role in the evolution of internal debates, including the change of the club’s direction after months of opposition led by a minority group (Catoni-Tordo) in the General Assembly and the Steering Committee.
It turns out that verified facts prove the opposite, and this is even more so after reading the excerpt of the meeting minutes of the Municipal Council of December 21, 2011, during which grants to sports clubs were voted, including the one in favor of the RNCA of 740,000 euros.
Here is Mr. Veissière’s response to Christine Dorejo’s question:
“Since then, these individuals have stepped aside for new investors who have taken the matter into their own hands and, I hope, will finally allow us to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
We had 13 years of presidency and, above all, a Steering Committee of more than 40 people. It was complicated to see clearly in this association. We have returned to a council of 9 people, which is more pleasant for working quickly.
We have commitments from both private partners and local authorities.
This is what I could say about rugby and the questions asked by Mrs. Dorejo and the participants”.
According to these statements, it seems that Gilles Veissière was rather well informed on this issue, confident in its validity, and not a stranger at all to the club’s life and functioning.
Can we then say that he was supportive, if not a facilitator of the arrival of Messrs. Deffins and Jeff Tordo who, on those same days, was interviewed on regional television and threatened the former president Christian Baldacchino with legal action?
So much for the past and the present. And the future?
There is no question that rugby, whose nearly century-old presence in the Azurian capital is often forgotten, should disappear in its noblest function: The education of young people, the transmission of values of friendship, solidarity, mutual aid, courage, and sometimes self-denial that make it a sport like no other.
And, if the trend is to start every project from the top, the flagship team that must serve as a locomotive for the carriages of the convoy, today it is a matter of reversing the model and starting again from the rugby school, the youth and women’s teams for a total reconstruction on healthy and solid foundations.
Turn the page. Write a new story on blank sheets while being careful to keep its soul, this is the path that allows us to look forward and leave behind once and for all the pettiness of the old fighters who sometimes are not worthy of their glorious past.
That is why we can only agree with those who propose the creation of a new club where educators, volunteer leaders, and parents can play a central role and constitute the lever for future governance of a “new” club (in every sense of the word). And why not with a woman (and mother) as president?
Patrick Allemand has already expressed support for this option, refusing the one that would have OGCN absorb rugby, after having done so with handball, with the objective of creating a super-club that would gather the Nice elite (rumor of a project circulating in the Nice sports world and attributed to the deputy for sports).
We now await the opinion, this one decisive, of the Mayor of Nice. We have the right to hope that, after so many errors, this time Christian Estrosi will not listen to the sirens of so many (too many?) advisors who have shown so little foresight and that he knows how to choose the path to go straight between the posts!
And if, for once, we set aside political rivalries and partisan interests to work for a just common cause?
