Bob Skinstad opens up on ‘alarming’ stats amid Béziers turmoil and brutal Pro D2 reality
Bob Skinstad opens up on 'alarming' stats amid Béziers turmoil and brutal ProD2 reality
When Bob Skinstad took over French rugby club Béziers with All Black great Andrew Mehrtens, the pair had an ambition of emulating La Rochelle’s rags-to-riches rise.
Béziers, 11-time former national champions, sat seventh in Pro D2, the second division from which La Rochelle escaped in 2014, reached the Top 14 final in 2021 and won the Champions Cup the next two years.
From day one, they described it as a “long-term project”. They did not kid themselves that their mere presence would awaken a giant which had slept soundly since its last Bouclier de Brennus 40 years before.
They did not, though, also expect 18 months later to see Association sportive de Béziers Hérault languishing second from bottom in the table, three games from being condemned to a relegation play-off match.
They did not foresee having to remove head coach Pierre Caillet, who would later be sentenced to six months’ suspended imprisonment for domestic violence.
Nor the open letter which followed, signed by 40 of the players, calling for Caillet’s reinstatement, expressing solidarity with him and what he had built at the club and “our desire to see the club retain its identity”.
Nor a season without a single away win and, this month alone, an alleged brawl in a car park and subsequent car chase following defeat at Nevers and the next weekend a 71-0 hammering at table-topping Vannes.
“We came in expecting passion,” says Skinstad. “But not the level of complexity and the hex, if you like, that a history of 25 years of non-performance has put on the club.
“The one thing you never know when you go into a new venture, particularly in sport, is all the nuances. The rugby heritage is amazing, the opportunity massive.
“But like a lot of things in sport, it does bring with it its own hubris and what you can’t do is come in, as an Anglo-Saxon influence, and just tell everyone what to do. They’ll resist that. So we’ve tried not to.”
“We’ve been biding our time”
Instead, club president Skinstad and his consortium have spent a year attempting to learn as much as they can about the club, the city and the community.
“We’ve been biding our time, watching what’s been happening in the environment,” he says. “It’s been difficult, to say the least, but we knew it was going to take us 18 months to two years to take control of the vestiaire [changing room].
“Of course, we have greater ambition than survival, but we bought a going concern when we took the club over, so were hamstrung. We had 32 contracts foisted on us that had nothing to do with our recruitment process.
“We’ve had to wait that out and, unfortunately, when you’re waiting that out, it’s not the most motivating environment for the players. We get that. But I remain steadfast that this is an amazing opportunity.”
Skinstad put his head above the parapet last week when accusing English rugby chiefs of “failing” the domestic game in England by turning the Gallagher PREM into a closed league.
“Talk is cheap”
Speaking to Planet Rugby, he said he found it “extraordinary you don’t actually have to put your livelihood on the line and stay at the top of your game as you do in France”.
His opinion carried weight not only due to his own rugby credentials but because he has put his money where his mouth is.
Come up short in the final three games against Carcassonne, Biarritz and Angouleme, and his investment may well go through the floor [into the third-tier Nationale]. Yet still he champions sporting jeopardy.
“Look, it’s vital we stay in Pro D2,” he says. “We want to be successful and we want to be competing at higher levels. Our aspirations for the club will never change.
“But talk is cheap. This is an anxious time but that’s what the jeopardy of French sport is all about. We are in a difficult moment but fully committed to the project.”
Skinstad was at the home game against Provence last Friday where his charges led Pro D2’s third-placed club by six with a minute to go, only to throw an interception and lose by a point.
“It was gut-wrenching,” he admits. “Games like that always weigh heavily on me. I so want the guys to do well.”
And so the drama heads west to the medieval fortified city of Carcassonne, where this Friday les Rouge et Bleu make the 68-mile trip to face the only club beneath them in the table.
Given their hosts are rock bottom, nine points adrift, the Stade Albert Domec clash should be an away banker. Only Béziers don’t do away bankers. They have not won on the road all season.
“The stats are actually alarming”
It is not unusual for French clubs to focus almost exclusively on winning their home games. Nonetheless, Skinstad says he has been shocked at the way “even the best teams just capitulate”.
He adds: “The stats are actually alarming. Clubs rest senior players for away games which breeds the fallacy that it’s impossible to win away from home. That’s become the mindset.
“I’ve walked around the city of Béziers in the week of an away game and everybody’s already resigned to losing. It’s part of the nuance of what we are learning.
“But do I regret getting involved? Absolutely not. I’ve had really difficult emotional times around the rugby but never doubted it’s something I want to be part of.
“I firmly believe Béziers will return to the top of French rugby again. I think it’s the perfect part of the world and, from our side, the perfect recipe for investment.”