Not all glamour for family man Masoe

AH, IT’S tough being an All Black. Nearly two weeks they had to endure on the beach-front Sofitel Palm Beach hotel, getting ready for their World Cup opener against Italy in Marseille, before being whisked off 200 miles north by TGV to the old city of Lyon, and the luxury Mercure Perrache, where Portugal and another big win awaited.

Now they’re back down south again, in beautiful Aix-en-Provence, a couple of days R&R before preparations begin for Scotland in Edinburgh on Sunday. Their base? The 4-star Le Pigonnet Hotel, a luxurious 18th century Provencal country house, extended and enhanced (says the website) in the 1930’s. It has a ‘monumental gateway,’ ceramic and Genoese tile-adorned towers, beautiful shrub-filled, tree-lined formal gardens. It has a top-class restaurant, a heated outdoor swimming-pool (though with temperatures in the low 30’s, you’d think they’d have a cooled outdoor swimming-pool), it has a steam-bath and a ‘body-building’ room, not that these men need much more building.

Best of all though, says wrecking-ball of a backrow, Chris Masoe, is the fact that its all theirs, all 49 rooms of it.