Peter Bills: Fireworks in Paris to take some beating
It wasn't something you see at rugby grounds every week. Entombed within a faux wall, a plaster of Paris- type creation, the half-naked girl lay draped upon the top of a cage in which a huge leopard prowled.
By the time eight enormous men, dressed only in silk loincloth, complete with another 16 dressed as Roman guards, had wheeled the float onto the field and to the centre of the Stade de France in Paris last Saturday night, the girl and the leopard hidden inside must have been rather well acquainted.
So they opened the faux plaster, to appropriate music, and the audience gasped at the sight of this beautiful creature. The animal, I mean, but you could have put a different interpretation on it.
The girl was helped down from the roof of the cage, clutching a golden rugby ball. She wore a thigh-length, silk sash-type creation, which was swung across her body, leaving one enormous breast completely uncovered.
She walked to the sideline holding high the ball. And as the players from Stade Francais and Toulon exploded onto the pitch amid this chaotic backdrop of climactic music and spectacle, the half-naked girl handed the ball to a player. Never mind the man with the golden gun; this was rugby's version of the girl with the golden breast.
When you attend one of Max Guazzini's French rugby spectaculars, it's best to leave behind any preconceived images of a rugby occasion. But this being Paris and this being a home game for Stade Francais, you go expecting anything.
The leopard had pitched up because Stade Francais wanted to publicise their new kit; leopard print shorts and shirts. In pink, naturally. Quite what the naked breast was advertising I am not so sure but we'd better not go there, anyway.
You smiled to yourself and wondered what the old guard, the Syd Millars and those dour, sober gentlemen of the Scottish Rugby Union would have made of it all. But in the entrepreneurial world of Guazzini's Stade Francais, rugby becomes showbiz and the crowds flock in.
Last Saturday in Paris was barely a day to send a dog out. It was cold and it rained. At one stage during the game, lightning flashed violently in a sky of gun-metal grey. And then the heavens opened and thousands were soaked to the skin.
No matter, they had come for the spectacle, the show and the elements hardly seemed of concern. Before the match, there had been a colourful parade of thousands of children, all carrying flags from various clubs and localities in and around the Paris region. They toured the ground, waving excitedly to friends in the crowd -- a simple but clever method of bringing youngsters to a rugby occasion.
There were groups playing and singing long before the match even began. And when it was over, almost every one of the 69,880 spectators, who had endured just about the worst of a northern hemisphere early winter's day, sat patiently awaiting the climax.
The turf was covered, the lights turned out and the vast bowl of the stadium stood in darkness. Suddenly, there came the first explosion. Music played and fireworks leapt into the night sky. Computer-synchronised explosions went around the stadium as ordinary fireworks roared upwards from the pitch.
innovation
There are firework displays and firework displays. But this was something else: a phenomenal spectacular that captivated the crowd. And when it was done, when their day of entertainment was over, they trooped off through the rain to the station where they queued patiently for the train back to Paris.
Who were these people? Were they chiefly diehard rugby fans, really only there for the game? Yet at an ordinary club match in a small stadium, Stade Francais expect to see little more than 10 or 12,000 fans. How is it that Guazzini's innovation of taking a couple of home games to Stade de France each season and putting on a spectacular continues to be an overwhelming success?
The answer was in the faces of most of those waiting for the train back to the city. Mothers holding hands with their children were everywhere to be seen. As for the children, there must have been thousands of them.
This was the personification of not a day out at the rugby, but a family day that merely involved a game. Guazzini's genius is in knowing how to attract families, how to take an ordinary match and build a show around it.
Oh that so many national unions around the world who try to produce abhorrent, second-rate examples of a similar species would seek out Guazzini's expertise.
- Peter Bills
Irish Independent
