Letter from Tours: Loire Valley ready for the Irish...and the more of them the better

The hope of municipal leaders and the sport’s hardcore community in the city is that the arrival of Ireland can light the spark for rugby and provide a foundation for rugby’s development here

IRISH INVASION: Ireland head coach Andy Farrell with players, including Jeremy Loughman of Ireland after the Rugby World Cup warm-up match between Ireland and Samoa. Pic: Harry Murphy/Sportsfile

It is not just the vineyards, the historic chateaux and natural beauty that has convinced Ireland’s World Cup squad to make their tournament base in the Loire Valley for the tournament’s pool campaign over the next six weeks.

Andy Farrell’s team has arrived in the ancient city of Tours meaning business for what lies ahead over the next two months and that most definitely includes training at a purpose-built, newly-renovated, rugby-specific €3.9 million complex just to the north of the famous river.

Officially opened on July 5, with Ireland’s ambassador to France Niall Burgess among the dignitaries on hand for the ribbon-cutting ceremony, Stade de la Chambrerie had been a year in the construction and boasts three full-size rugby pitches, two of natural grass and one artificial. Inside the new 1300 square-metre clubhouse sits a 300 sq-metre weights room with state-of-the-art equipment, eight dressing rooms, coaches’ offices, sports recovery area including ice bath, medical and doping control rooms and a video projector room.

It is also on the list of preparation facilities for the Paris 2024 Olympics and talk in Tours is that a successful hosting of Ireland’s Rugby World Cup squad may lead to the Ireland men’s and women’s Rugby Sevens squads using the complex next summer.

Financed by the City of Tours with grant assistance from regional government, the national sports agency and the French state, there is clearly an appetite for rugby given that all 9,900 tickets to Ireland’s open training session at nearby Stade de la Vallee du Cher, the home of Tours FC, this Saturday morning, have been eagerly snapped up.

Yet there is no Top 14 club here, not even second-tier ProD2 representation, with Union Sportive de Tours Rugby playing in France’s fourth division, the Federale 2. And no-one here is pretending their city or indeed the Loire Valley is a rugby hotbed. Yet the hope of municipal leaders and the sport’s hardcore community in the city is that the arrival of the Six Nations title holders and Grand Slam winners, currently World Rugby’s top-ranked side can light the spark for rugby and provide a foundation for rugby’s development here.

Ambassador Burgess thinks La Chambrerie will have just such an impact. When the professionals have moved on, the training grounds will be available to the rugby clubs of Tours in perpetuity.

He told the Irish Examiner: “This is legacy for rugby in Tours. It’s very interesting to see how the city and the region have used the presence of the Irish team as a good reason for investing in the sport for afterwards. So one of the legacies of the Irish team’s presence here will be a better supported and stronger rugby infrastructure here in Tours. That’s extraordinary and something I hadn’t fully appreciated.

“So in a way, politically, they have leveraged the presence of the Irish team here to develop the sport. We had a meeting before we came here to the stadium opening about just how important sport is societally in France now. It’s not just a matter of health and fitness and getting children into the game, it’s actually a very important way in which communities bind and pull together and I think that’s why the French are investing so heavily in it.” 

The squad’s presence in Tours here until October 5 can also have a legacy for Ireland, the country and its economy, explained Ambassador Burgess.

“Having a team of our quality and our strength here throughout the World Cup means a whole different scale of visibility. That’s where I find our visibility as a country. It’s not primarily for the work of embassies actually, it’s through sport, through music and people travelling and connecting through education. They’re the really powerful things.

“In France at the moment we have a culture that is very, very deeply rooted and appreciated in France. We have half a million visitors from Ireland who come to France every summer. They’re coming now in large numbers and they say something about the country, they’re a part of our brand here in France - and there are half a million French people coming to Ireland, so we exchange a million citizens every year.

“The Irish horse world comes out in October for the Prix de L’Arc (de Triomphe) and so there are a few sports where Ireland is just a very, very big player and bigger than the kind of weighting we would normally get. So that’s why I think it’s important.”