If you saw a 50-year-old man running naked around the Arc de Triomphe at midnight last summer, that would have been Philippe Guillard. He was making good his promise to run a naked lap of the Parisian landmark if more than 500,000 people went to see his film about life among the rugby people of France's south-west. His assessment turned out to be too modest by half.
Since its release at the start of the year more than a million people have flocked to see Le Fils à Jo, a film which is to its sport and its region as the 1996 British film Brassed Off was to brass bands and the South Yorkshire coalfields: a comedy with soul and roots and humanity, and a deep love of its subject and its setting. Not Citizen Kane, maybe, but enough to make you feel that modern cinema is not all special effects.
It was the ideal film to watch on the long flight from London to Auckland three weeks ago, and it will get a second viewing on Tuesday's return journey – with an even greater resonance, since France's national rugby team chose Sunday night and the final of the rugby World Cup at Eden Park to rediscover themselves and ensure that their own trip home would not be undertaken with foreboding. They might not be able to enjoy the kind of victory parade down the Champs-Elysees that brought Auckland's Queen Street to a standstill on Monday, but neither will there be tumbrils parked outside the airport terminal.
A former wing three-quarter with Racing Club de France, as they were called 20 years ago, Guillard played alongside Franck Mesnel and Jean-Baptiste Lafond in the famous side of extroverts who won the 1990 French championship final with pink bow ties on their jerseys.
After his playing career finished he went to work in television, as a touchline analyst, presenter of a weekly rugby round-up and comedy scriptwriter, while planning his first feature film as a writer and director.
The story is that of a small local club fallen on hard times, kept alive only by the dedication of Jo Cannavaro, a middle-aged widower. But whereas Jo was following a family tradition (and almost made the France team in the process), his own young son, the boy of the title, resists involvement. The club, too, are threatened when the land is sold to a foreign company that plans to dig up the pitch and build a distribution depot.
Salvation arrives from one direction in the shape of a giant former All Black who agrees to coach the youth team, including Jo's son, in a local tournament, and from the other in the love of a good woman. Something for almost everyone, in fact.
Guillard needed €2.5m (£2.2m) to make Le Fils à Jo, which is not even small change by Hollywood standards. Pressure on the budget was eased by using real locations close to the town of Gaillac in the department of the Tarn. Alongside a handful of very fine professional actors are a few old rugby pals who agreed to wear the greasepaint.
Vincent Moscato, the former hooker of Bordeaux-Begles and France, plays Pompon, a lovable village idiot who turns out to be an idiot savant. Moscato, too, opted for the screen after rugby, presenting a weekly show and appearing in more than a dozen films, the next being the latest in the Asterix and Obelix series, this one in 3D with Gérard Depardieu and Catherine Deneuve.
Christian Califano, of Toulouse, Saracens, Gloucester and 72 caps in the France front row, plays the local station master, and Darren Adams, a one-time NZ Maori, is the All Black who arrives to coach the boys.
Playing Jo Cannavaro is the well-known actor Gérard Lanvin, a specialist in the crumpled charm of the middle-aged Frenchman, himself once a winger in junior rugby.
Until 10 days ago I was thinking that the story could be easily transposed to the Welsh valleys, with Michael Sheen in the lead and a new title – Dai's Boy, perhaps – to capitalise on a win in the World Cup. Well, maybe not this time round. Still a great little film, though.
Tackling Arsenal's aversion to one-touch football
Arsène Wenger bases decisions on statistical evidence – he got rid of Gilberto Silva because the Brazilian was holding on to the ball a fraction of a second too long – so it seems worth examining some numbers that emerged from the statisticians at Opta Sports the other day. Before this past weekend, Wenger's players had been tackled in possession more frequently than those of any other club in the Premier League (197 in eight matches) and the Champions League (88 in five). This has to tell us something. Following the departure of Cesc Fábregas and Samir Nasri, with Jack Wilshere a long-term absentee and Aaron Ramsey still feeling his way back to full effectiveness, the team as a whole lack the confidence to execute the sort of one-touch interplay Wenger favours. When those underlying statistics start to improve, the team's convalescence will be nearly over.
Uncle Ted of the All Blacks
If you were wondering why New Zealanders refer to the All Blacks' head coach as Ted, you were not alone. The natural conclusion would be that it had something to do with a TV comedy. The real story is much more charming. When Graham Henry was a lad at Christchurch Boys' high school in the mid-50s, he was so mad on cricket that he persuaded the chief scorer at Lancaster Park, as it then was, to let him help operate the old-fashioned scoreboard during Plunket Shield matches. Since the scorer's name was Ted, Henry became Little Ted – and thence, from his schooldays onwards, just Ted. The affectionate "Uncle" was added later, as a famously hard-boiled nature softened with age.
Simoncelli and safety
In the way that one rider's fall involved others, the awful death of Marco Simoncelli at Sepang on Sunday reminded me of the day in 1973 during the Grand Prix of Nations meeting at Monza when Renzo Pasolini – an Italian who, like Simoncelli, rode as much with his heart as his head – went down on his 250cc Aermacchi, starting an accident that involved 12 more riders, including Jarno Saarinen, the brilliant Finn. Both Pasolini and Saarinen were killed. Safety lessons were learnt that day, as they must be now.
richard.williams@theguardian.com
