After 'preparing for the worst', Tom Daly determined to make most of Nice opportunity 

LIFE IN NICE: Former Connacht centre Tom Daly has swapped the West of Ireland for a new chapter in Nice. Picture:Stade Nicois Rugby

THE 3,000-capacity Stade Marcel Volot, home ground of promoted ProD2 side Nice, is by some margin the smallest venue in French professional rugby’s second-tier.

It’s two-fifths the capacity of the division’s next smallest venue, Dax’s Stade Maurice Boyau, while the largest stadium, Grenoble’s Stade des Alpes, has seats for crowds of 20,000-plus. On Friday, they hosted high-flying and ambitious Brive, who average crowds of nearly 12,500 at home this season.

Stade Niçois, a club in fervent football country, has big ambitions according to ex-Connacht centre Tom Daly, who swapped the west of Ireland for the south of France last summer.

“It was a big project to get to the ProD2,” he said. “We want to stay [here]. I know the president that has just come has long-term goals to get Nice to the Top 14 and get rugby big in this region, but the immediate goal this year is to survive. I think we’ve been doing a decent job of it so far.” 

The club’s new president, Jean-Baptiste Aldigé, took charge – at the beginning of July, after six sometimes turbulent years in charge at Biarritz ended with the club’s sale, for a symbolic €1, in May. He won’t have to look far for a target symbol of what could be if he nails the rugby project here.

“The stadium is four or five minutes up the road from the huge football stadium,” Daly said. The Allianz Riviera, home to the city’s Ligue 1 side and renamed Stade de Nice for sponsorship reasons when it hosted four pool matches at Rugby World Cup 2023, has capacity for 35,000 fans.

In contrast, “our stadium is humble and small,” Daly said. “There’s a stand on one side and then the other three sides, there’s nothing there. But when the stand is full, it’s good.

“[We don’t get] the biggest crowds, but they’re loud and they get stuck in. The supporters club call themselves the Stade Niçois Kop. They’re in one corner of the stand and make lots of noise.” 

The volume and support of the small crowd at Nice is far from unique in French rugby. A press release from the Ligue Nationale de Rugby this week says that ProD2 crowds after eight matches this season are seven percent up on the same period in 2023/24.

Daly’s sample size of ProD2 matchday crowds is small, but he’s already noticed the high passion levels from the stands in the games he’s played.

“The likes of Agen, they have huge crowds for a small town. Everyone follows the rugby. It was the same in Aurillac – really loud supporters, which is cool to experience.” 

NEW CHAPTER: Tom Daly has settled into life in Nice. Picture: Stade Nicois Rugby

Last Friday’s 16-26 home loss against big-spending Brive saw Nice slip to the foot of the table, with three wins from their opening 11 matches. After successive wins home and away in early October that saw them climb to 13th, the bubble has burst in recent weeks. They have lost four on the bounce: a down-to-earth bump of a defeat at home to fellow strugglers Valence, two tight defeats on the road at Dax and high-flying Montauban, and the loss against Brive, who climbed to third courtesy of their four points.

Daly missed the 19-24 defeat at Marcel Volot to Valence, after finishing the unexpected 16-25 victory at Aurillac with a dead leg the week previously, where he scored his first ProD2 try in his fifth outing.

But he was back at inside centre for the 22-19 loss at Dax and the agonising 34-30 defeat at Montauban – a match decided by a 76th-minute try for the high-flying home side – and for the hard-fought loss against Brive, a game still very much in the balance with 10 minutes to play.

The Carlow man seems to be finding his feet after a move imposed upon him by professional circumstance following six seasons at what is now Dexcom Stadium. 

“There were times this year I thought I wouldn’t get a contract in rugby,” he admitted. “I was preparing for the worst. I was getting married in the summer and I couldn’t tell my wife what we were doing or where we were going. It was a stressful time until this came up.” 

As enforced decisions go, however, early signs suggest that the two-year stint in the south of France could work out just fine, especially if Nice survive their first season in France’s second tier.

“If it was a decision I had to make myself, I would have jumped at it,” Daly said. “A few guys were looking at Nice over the last few years, and we were saying, ‘when that team gets to Pro D2, it’s going to be a team you’d want to be at’, given where it is and the lifestyle you could have here.”

The club’s arrival in the recruitment market this summer came late in the game. Nice went on a recruitment spree only after confirming promotion by beating Narbonne in May’s third-tier Nationale final.

“When Nice got promoted, they obviously went on a bit of a recruitment hunt and, luckily for me, centre was one of the positions they were looking to reinforce. I jumped at the offer as soon as they made it.” And what does he make of the ProD2 so far?

“From a rugby point of view, it’s very similar to what we have in Ireland,” he said. “The quality is really good – I’d heard that before I came and sometimes you might not believe it, but being in the games it’s evident that it’s a tough, tough league and there’s a lot of quality French players, quality international players.

“Each game I’ve been in has been a dogfight – it lives up to the hype, the ProD2.” 

But, apart from the location, the lifestyle, the standard of rugby, the passion of the fans, and the promise of a bright future for Nice rugby if they survive their first season in the league, there is a downside.

“I’m only a few games in, but the one thing I’ve noticed is the physicality,” Daly admitted. “Even my wife noticed. We have Saturdays off after a game and she has things planned, like she wants to go to Saint-Tropez or Monaco for the day – and I roll out of bed and I can barely walk.

“She said she hasn’t seen me as sore as I have been after the last few games here.” 

Daly has been in France for a matter of months, after being unable to land a worthwhile deal elsewhere. There’s more time left on his contract than has passed. Unsurprisingly, he’s not looking far into the future, but said: “I’d love to stay in France as long as I can and keep playing rugby. If my body is still able to play at a high level, I’d love to keep playing at a high level.

“I’d love to stay in Nice, if the option was there. But you never know what’s going to happen, so I’m just taking it week by week. We’ll see what happens, where the world takes us.”