The Frenchman Ceccarelli explains France’s champagne rugby

The prop of the national team has been playing in France since 2020, the first opponent of the Azzurri in the Six Nations. Beyond the Alps, the game is elegant, inspired, spectacular. Then tournaments “are tough everywhere. For us, the first commandment is to win the fray”. But still “no one plays for money. It’s just a beautiful parenthesis”. Interview

The British label it “French flair”: it means style, but also sense, flair, intuition, attitude. The Italians call it “rugby champagne”: sparkling, bubbly, inebriating, refined, selected. They explain that it is simply “the French game”: elegant, inspired, spectacular.