The two-backed beast

A word about the work

GUFE004
Winter 2013, Union des Bords de Marne Rugbys training stadium.
This image was produced as part of a vast documentary series: « Le sport au cœur », portraits of a passion. In this far-reaching, (on-going) project, the author offers to portray the passion of this sport through 52 portraits. Ordinary people and celebrities from sport or elsewhere rub shoulders portraying their passion and practice, each in their own way. The first portrait of the series is of Daniel Domergue, the boss of an advertising agency who is passionate about rugby and who decided at the start of the 2000s to create a club from scratch, along the Marne river (Nogent-Le Perreux, Bry etc…) where rugby was absent. The club (Union des boucles de la Marne) is now called UBM Rugbys having merged with Villiers-sur-Marne, a rugby stronghold in the Val de Marne. The A team is in the Federal 3 league.

I discovered a whole new world on this occasion. A world of genuine passion, of volunteers, generous with their time and energy. I experienced it all through Daniel, who I followed for a week, from the mid-week training sessions to the Sunday match, via the sum of tiny administrative and logistical details that make up the daily life of this managing director. An endless marathon, both accepted and intentional, which nourishes this passionate entrepreneur. That evening, everything was there. The temperature was relatively cold, the mist and pale, surfacing light of this almost dreamlike world, these players warming up and forming a strange animal.

Jean-Denis’s choice

Beyond its esthetic power, this photo is about everything it takes you back to. For players and ex-players, it is Proust’s madeleine. It brings back the sensation of dampness, the smell of grass, the sadness of Parisian winter evenings and training sessions which you sometimes go to, feeling hassled by your day but so happy to leave it all behind for a few hours and get together over this sport. Thank you William Webb Ellis for allowing us to experience this. Playing rugby makes its mark forever and is a world that stays with you for the rest of your life.