Springboks in Paris 1907-2007... part II

Last Sunday, I was mentionning that the Springboks played against a French team on January 3rd, 1907 at the Parc des Princes, and that this match wasn't recorded as a Test match... Here is a French newspaper (Sports Universel Illustrés, Jan.1907) which gives the whole story...

The funny thing (or not so funny....) is that the "official" Equipe de France was already en route to London to play against England two days later. This fixture was France third official match in our short internationnal rugby history... and the only one played in 1907... (lost 13-41 to England, cf a recently published picture here). French best players (Communeau, Beaurin, Vareilles, Muhr, Mauriat, Lacassagne...) were away, thus the Boks were proposed to play a selection of Paris teams (9 players from Stade Français : Combe, Lesieur, Sagot, Jérome etc... and 6 from RCF : Maullman, Dupré, etc...)... Final score 54-6 for the Boks...

It seems that the stands of Parc des Princes were fairly crowded... :



Follow the link to access to the newspaper page (in French) (at least the first page...). The "Springboks" name, recently adopted by British commentators during SA tour in 1906 hasn't crossed the Channel yet... French journalist only refers to the "Afrikanders"...

Identificateurs Technorati : rugby, springboks, equipe de france