School to Stade de France for teacher Guy Noves

Long before he was in charge of France, or even leading Toulouse to their vast array of titles, Guy Noves was starting his coaching career at a school, instilling his winning mentality into children.

It was in the small town of Pibrac, 15 kilometres from Toulouse, that it all began for Noves, 30 years before he took over the Les Bleus side for the ongoing Six Nations Championship.

Then a Toulouse winger, Noves began teaching physical education in the late 1970s at the Bois de la Barthe college and quickly started a rugby section at the school.

Former France full-back Jean-Luc Sadourny was one of the first to play under Noves in school rugby.

"At first it was just starting, and he was trying to give college students who did not know the sport a taste of rugby," Sadourny said.

Noves was bringing rugby to youngsters who had never played the game, some of whom would go on to bigger and better things.

"Basketball players, they were the second rows, judokas were props and the sprinters were wingers," smiled former international fly-half David Skrela.

- "Tough but fair" -
Eric Labourdette was one of the converted, he remembered: "I was a footballer, he wanted me to switch at any price. He saw me running everywhere, I was competitive and always wanted to win."

Noves developed qualities in Pibrac that would go on to help him become such a strong coach at Toulouse, where he stayed in charge from 1993 until just last year.

"It was a tough, but fair type of psychology. He was the only teacher who would make your hair stand on end when he spoke to you on the sidelines," recalled Labourdette, who now owns a hunting and fishing store.

And even though they were only children, Noves, who this weekend will try to derail England's Grand Slam bid, had the same drive to win that brought him such success at Toulouse.

An 18-year-old referee at the time, Maxime Mamet remembers a final of a school tournament in 1998, during which he saw lightning strike from the Pibrac bench.

"I had refused a try following a free-kick played quickly because I had not seen the end of the play. Noves went totally mad, he screamed even though Pibrac had a big lead. I was feeling so uncomfortable," he chuckles today.

- "It was war"
Between us, it was war," says Serge Gabernet, a former Toulouse full-back who went head-to-head with Noves as the P.E teacher at 'rival' school Saint-Lys.

"Normally, there is no competition between the young but, with us, there was so much that we would argue when we would meet in the evening to go to training at Stade," continues Gabernet, who also said that for Noves the college was a laboratory.

Led by their future France boss, Pibrac became a stronghold of school rugby.

"We trained four times a week. We ate as fast as we could and went out onto the sports field," added Skrela, who won two school titles in the early 1990s, before returning to the city to play for Toulouse between 2008-2011.

But, unlike Skrela or Sadourny, most of the students never experienced the highest level.

"Noves said to me: 'you can be a good player, but not a very big one'. Suddenly, it did not interest me. I wanted to be the champion of France, and in the end I was... in trout fishing! And years later I rang him and said, 'I told you I would be champion'," recalls Labourdette, who stayed close to his teacher, who also enjoys fishing.

And as with his college students decades ago, the challenge for Noves is to successfully bring a stuttering France side the same will to win.
Source: AFP