Remarkable referee dies
Before France played Wales at Stade de France on Saturday, France paid its respects to remarkable rugby referee, Bernard Marie, the first Frenchman to referee a Five Nations – as it was then – match. Marie was 96 when he died.
He achieved his refereeing fame by accident.
On 27 March 1965, France played Wales in Paris as they did 50 years later though then it was at Stade Colombes. The referee for the match was Ron Gilliland of Ireland but he burst a blood vessel in his calf after 32 minutes in the first half and had to be replaced.
In those days the touch judges were not unattached appointments but from each of the countries. This caused a ten-minute delay as the two presidents and others decided whether Gilliland's replacement should be the Ken Jones, Welsh touch judge, or the French touch judge, Bernard Marie. The lot fell to Marie, for the law requires the home side to decide in the case of a dispute ("A touch judge of the visited union shall replace him [referee unable to continue]"). Marie had refereed Wales against Fiji in Cardiff the previous year after making his Test debut in Buenos Aires in 1960 when France played Argentina. In other words he was a well-established referee.
This was the last match of the Five Nations that year. Wales had already won the championship and the Triple Crown. This was for the Grand Slam, but France were on top from early on and led 22-0 before Wales came back to make the final score 22-13 to France.
In all he refereed 10 Test matches, two finals of the French Championship in 1961 and 1965 and three Du Manoir Challenge Finals. He was appointed to another Five Nations match, England vs Ireland, the next year and is regarded as the man who opened the way to French referees in Five Nations rugby.
He was made an officer of the Legion d'Honneur by President Chirac.
Marie, who was born in Toulouse, grew up in the Basque country and went to school in Bayonne. He played rugby for Biarritz Olympique and then during World War II was a member of the French Resistance forces who opposed the Germans. This brought him into contact with Charles de Gaul. He was a prisoner of war who tried and failed to escape twice before succeeding the third time.
In 1946 he started refereeing rugby which he loved and in 1967 two rugby-loving politicians persuaded him to get involved in politics by standing for parliament. He was elected a deputy (member of parliament) for Pyrénées-Atlantiques and stayed one till 1981. He was the Mayor of Biarritz from 1977 to 1992
His wife Renee served with him in the resistance and their only child, a daughter Michèle Alliot-Marie, nicknamed Mam, who studied law and politics at the Sorbonne, has held several cabinet posts in France.
Raoul Bernard Lucien Marie, a manager of the Banque de France, was born in Toulouse on 17 June 1918 and died in Neuilly-sur-Seine on 10 February 2015, survived by his daughter Michèle.
