The small club with big ambition
Albi enter the European fray
While illustrious Top 14 counterparts like Toulouse are battling it out at the summit of the Heineken action, Albi, new to France's top flight and with a tenth of the budget of Toulouse, will take their first cautious steps in European competition when they line-up in the European Challenge Cup against Clermont on Saturday.
Albi are the only new boys on the European club scene, but they promise to bring something special to their European Challenge Cup meetings with Worcester Warriors, Viadana and ASM Clermont Auvergne.
They highlight the strength of community rugby now pervading the game at all levels across Europe, and which has been prevalent in the French league for a long time.
With past presidents of the club including late French President Georges Pompidou, it is perhaps surprising to find that this small South Western club only became professional five years ago.
The Top 14 is renowned for the same big five clubs dominating the rest, but this season Albi have made plenty of headlines with some huge scalps – most notably Perpignan and Bourgoin.
"When we were promoted, we were just hoping for survival," said coach Eric Bechu.
"Now we are mid-table with crucial victories under our belts against Heineken Cup quality teams, suddenly we realise that this may not be just about escaping relegation.
"Fifteen players, out there playing with the hearts of amateurs for a club they love, can clearly compete against squads of highly trained, highly paid professionals."
The club has over 100 volunteers who run a wide range of club activities from selling tickets to manning the bars on match days.
"There is a real fiesta atmosphere here on match day and we need all the extra pairs of hands we can get," said ex-club president Louis Barret.
"This club is run by the community for the community. We have a large number of local retired people who come down during the day and lend a hand."
Barret also acts as Chief Executive whilst drawing no salary from a club who count only seven full-time staff including the coaching team. It may sound like a well worn cliché but this club and its facilities really do belong to everyone.
The club café is always bustling with players doing video analysis of their last match whilst the local schoolchildren use it as a canteen and people from across the town come down to meet each other over coffee.
Albi’s junior rugby section boasts 260 children and is run by the coaches and players from the first team. There is an element of putting something back into the club, but the players feel a really long-term bond with the club.
"This club is definitely still amateur in spirit and little has changed in the attitude of the players since the days when we were amateurs," said wing and current top try-scorer Patrice Serre.
"We have seen changes to the intensity of our work and in a way we have grown up together, going from two training sessions a week to full-time and seeing the facilities at the club get better and better.
"It’s more than a job to us and we want to secure the future of our club. We have done coaching with the local kids since I joined the club five years ago and getting into the Top 14 hasn’t changed anything.
"If our coaching gives back a handful of players to the senior squad in eight years time, we will have done our bit."
When Albi looked like they were going to win promotion to the Top 14, they secured funding for a new stand and, with the support of a local architect, they were able to put up a 3,000-seater stand in just two months.
"We wanted a stand worthy of the level of rugby we will be playing – we didn’t want the likes of Toulouse or our European Challenge Cup teams coming over and not being comfortable," said Barret.
The club’s last visit to top flight rugby was 20 years ago and the club first went professional five years ago with Bechu seen as the driving force behind the club’s achievement.
He arrived at Albi eight years ago while the club were in the amateur Fédérale 1 Division (France's third tier) and he immediately took them to three successive league finals culminating in promotion to the Pro D2 and professionalism in 2002.
"We are like a salvage crew," said Bechu.
"We take on players who have not had their contracts renewed elsewhere and offer them the opportunity and support they need to get back to playing high quality rugby. Vincent Clement and Boris Stankovich are prime examples of players who have come to Albi and flourished.
"When we got promoted, the first thing we did with the extra money was to give our existing players a pay rise. We then recruited a few extra players, offering them the same terms as our existing squad.
"It’s very bad when a group of players get a team promoted and then don’t get their contracts renewed because the club is in a position to sign big stars.
"We were adamant that the people who got us here were going to get the opportunity to play top flight domestic and European rugby."
As for Europe, the club has already started counting down to its date with destiny.
"Obviously survival in the Top 14 is vital but we are still going to play for everything in this tournament," said Bechu.
"Between one week and the next in the Top 14 we change up to 15 players and we are digging deep into our youth set-up. With only 33 contracted players, our first team and the under 23s train together so we can easily move people into the squad. There is no real first team."
And his plans for the European Challenge Cup games are also not what you’d expect from a mid-league French club.
"The players who have been with us since we were in the pro D2 and worked so hard to get us here are all very excited about playing rugby in another country," he said.
"The majority of our players do not have any experience of playing regular Top 14 rugby, let alone European rugby, and one of the rewards for these players is the opportunity to travel.
"Even if I wanted to, I would never get away with leaving these guys behind. They have earned the right to go to England and Italy and I am not going to stand in their way."
