The Battle of Nantes: The Story of the Most Violent Rugby Match Ever

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Transcript

Sean Fitzpatrick’s All Black debut was weird. The year was 1986, and the All Blacks needed to negotiate a tricky one-off Test against the Five Nations champions, France, at Lancaster Park in Christchurch. 

Young Fitzy wasn’t even expected to play. He was second-choice hooker in a third-choice side behind Bruce Hemara, but Hemara popped a rib in practice before the Test. 

Fitzpatrick was called into coach Brian Lochore’s bedroom to collect his jersey. There were 21 of them in plastic wrappers on Lochore’s bed; Fitzy reached down to grab one. “Wow,” he thought, “the big moment – this is it – I’m in for my first Test.” 

New Zealand rugby was in tumult at the time of Fitzpatrick’s debut Test against France. In April and May of that year, after the All Blacks’ official tour of South Africa was stopped because of an injunction brought by two young New Zealand lawyers, Andy Dalton had taken a group of 30 top players unofficially to South Africa anyway. 

They were paid good money, so breaking the amateur code. They called themselves the Cavaliers, giving themselves a patina of brio and heady, throw-the-ball around irreverence they didn’t deserve. Back home in New Zealand, they were called “Dalton’s Dirty Thirty.”

When some of them, like the young winger, John Kirwan, were offered more money to tour South Africa it didn’t help to change their mind. Just the opposite: they realised that it might be a good idea not to tour. 

Kirwan stayed behind to work in his father’s butchery, realising that making a part-moral, part-pragmatic stand now would probably serve him well later. This was also the view of a happening young scrumhalf called David Kirk, who had made his All Black debut in 1983. 

He, too, stayed at home, preferring not to be too cavalier with his rugby future. It turned out to be an inspired decision for reasons we will learn about shortly.

When the Cavaliers returned home from South Africa, Dalton and his vice-captain, Jock Hobbs, were called into the headquarters of New Zealand Rugby Football Union in Wellington to hear about their future. They got off lightly, with a two-match international ban, and a wink to the effect that it was a pity they hadn’t done better in South Africa, where they lost the “Tests” 3-1. One of these losses was by a single point.

The first Test the Cavaliers were banned for was Fitzy’s debut Test against France, the one in which he wasn’t expected to play. The second fell during the first of three Bledisloe Cup Tests against old foes, Australia.

By the time the All Blacks played France again, all 30 who had toured South Africa with the Cavaliers had been rehabilitated. Many of them were features of the official All Blacks but some had lost their battle with time and shuffled off to reminisce about glorious times past and write their memoirs. 

Having got his grubby paws on an All Black jersey almost by chance on the eve of the Test in Christchurch, Fitzy wasn’t keen to let go of it. So, here he was, playing against France again. There was only one All Black side now. And he aimed to stay in it.

The first All Black Test in France in 1986 didn’t put the French in a very good mood. They lost it by twelve points in Toulouse. “Buck” Shelford, the rangy eighthman, made his official All Black debut in Toulouse after having had an eye-catching tour of South Africa with the Cavaliers. 

Shelford had a good game against France. He scored a try. He seemed to be everywhere. The French noticed that although he wasn’t captain, he behaved like one. The rest of the pack looked to him for direction and inspiration.

The second Test against the All Blacks was in Nantes, at the Stade de la Beaujoire – the so-called “Stadium of Beautiful Play.” It was a Test France couldn’t afford to lose, because, if they did so, they would lose the home series. 

It would also mean that they had lost three on the reel against the All Blacks, including the loss back in New Zealand in which Fitzy had made his debut because New Zealand’s best 30 were on tour of South Africa with the Cavaliers. Three straight losses were unthinkable.

So the French took matters into their own hands. They interpreted the phrase to “beat them” literally. To this end, they dispensed with the referee, South Africa’s Steve Strydom, as though he were a mere spectator. 

With four new players and six positional changes in their midst, Franck Mesnel, their flyhalf, kicked off. The ball, sponsored by Adidas, with its distinctive blackened tips, hung in the air. 

Eventually it could hang no longer. It was gathered by the All Blacks’ lock, Murray Pierce, who was swamped by a collapsing blue wall of French forwards. What has subsequently been called the “Battle of Nantes”, one of the most violent matches in the history of rugby, was underway. 

The crowd cheered, bellowed and brayed. Murder and mayhem were in the air. 

The All Blacks knew they were in for a long afternoon when the teams lined up in the tunnel, waiting to run on. Strangely, the teams weren’t both facing in the same direction, as is usually the case. Rather, they were facing each other. 

This gave Shelford an opportunity to look into French eyes. Shelford was not a man to be stared down but knew immediately something was up. He saw French eyes bloodshot with revenge. He suspected some French forwards were “on the juice”. 

The All Blacks instinctively recognised they were in for one of those afternoons. This is what Kirwan, still pleased that he had chosen not to tour with the Cavaliers, had to say about his opponents’ on the day: “They were literally frothing at the mouth.”

It would help to remember that rugby was a different proposition in 1986. Place-kicking took place with an upright ball, rather than with its tip facing the poles a la Damian McKenzie or Marcus Smith. There were no slow-motion replays and no TMOs. 

It was not a given that television was always present. The Cavaliers tour of South Africa, for example, wasn’t televised in New Zealand because the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation refused to take the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) feed.

The laws were different in those days, too. There was no lifting allowed in the line-outs. Hookers threw the ball into line-outs one-handed, which frequently meant the ball was thrown in with only limited control. Whether it was your throw or not, the ball floated in and you jumped. Sometimes you grabbed it because it was nominally yours; sometimes you grabbed at it anyway because it wasn’t yours. It was all a bit of a lottery.

The violence that was a feature of the Pierce dunking when he caught Mesnel’s kick-off, continued unabated as the match progressed. Shelford was punched, gouged and kicked, as were most of the other All Black forwards. 

In the first-half he was knocked temporarily unconscious. Appearing to be very much the spectator, Strydom seemed either unperturbed by the high levels of foul play or was simply unable to do anything about it. 

If the French were enraged on the paddock, they were equally blood-thirsty on the stands. I’ve watched the entire match on film and have identified no New Zealander supporters in Nantes. They might have been there, but if they were, I didn’t see them. 

What I saw were tens of thousands of Frenchmen standing on the terraces, waving the French Tricolore and baying for New Zealand blood.

Rugby matches of great violence are never satisfying as spectacles because there is another match lurking inside the match itself – the game of violence within the game. So we watch the movement of the ball while also watching for the sly raking of an opposition forward on the ground. We watch for the rabbit punch or the gouge. We watch for the late or the high tackle. We watch in too many different directions to really get a handle on the game.

And this was a game that never really got a handle on itself. It was full of errors, little black marks, like olives in a jar. For while it has been dubbed one of the foulest spectacles in rugby history, it was also a Test which had some diabolical place-kicking, particularly from the French. And it also had some wildly optimistic drop-kicking to go with the breezy thuggery.

From being 3-all at half-time, with the All Black just holding on to the game by their fingertips, the French pack began to gain control in the second-half. A tight-head – remember them? – against the All Blacks close to their line, saw the ball bob free. The French were quickest to pounce. Denis Chavet picked up and dived over from close.

Not long after that, Shelford finally needed to be escorted from the field. He had lost teeth. He was, he said afterwards, in “la-la land”. 

But so important was he to the side that his skipper, Hobbs, a tourist to South Africa with the Cavaliers, didn’t want him to go off. Although just starting out his international career, Shelford was already the pack’s talisman. And, anyway, there were no more substitutes left.

But it was no good. Shelford didn’t know whether he was in Nantes or Nantucket. The match was all but lost when he was escorted from the field and definitely lost when Strydom blew the final whistle. The end, however, was also a beginning – the beginning of the Buck Shelford legend.

Afterwards, with the Test having been lost, sitting in the shell-shocked New Zealand change-room, Shelford got up off his stool to take off his kit before walking to the showers. There was a pool of blood at his feet. 

As he bent down wearily to take off his “strides” or briefs, his teammates looked on, aghast. His thighs were bloodied. His scrotum had been so badly ripped open by the studs of a French boot that his testicles had fallen out. Had the All Blacks not been so thoroughly demoralised, someone would have laughed. He needed 46 stitches but, an hour or two later, Buck was back at the bar, downing a beer – or two.

Balls come in many shapes and sizes. Equally full of ballsy individuals at the time was the pride of the Greenpeace fleet, the Rainbow Warrior, tied up in Auckland Harbour. 

The Warrior, the captain and crew, were used to making a nuisance of themselves in the South Pacific, a favoured spot for American and French nuclear testing. They were often boarded by commandos. They were sometimes fired-upon or rammed. In a manner of speaking, they stuck to their guns anyway.

The Rainbow Warrior didn’t only blithely sail into exclusion zones. They tried to prevent whaling and tried to prevent the dumping of nuclear waste. They also rescued people, as they did when they sailed 300 Marshall Islanders to safety when the islanders’ atoll had been polluted by radio-active fallout.

By 1985, the Rainbow Warrior was awaiting her next assignment – which was to protest against French nuclear testing in the Mururoa Atoll in the Pacific. One cold July night, with her small crew either asleep or listening to mellow records by the Doors and the Jimi Hendrix Experience as they snuggled under their duvets, a limpet mine clamped to her hull by a scuba diver exploded. It was close to midnight. There was pandemonium on board. 

The mine blew a hole the size of a small car in the Rainbow Warrior’s side. The crew evacuated as the ship listed and started taking water. 

Seven minutes later, a second explosion rocked the boat. A Portuguese freelance photographer was drowned because he returned to the Rainbow Warrior shortly before the second bomb went off to retrieve his equipment and take photographs.

The bombing of the ship, peacefully moored in Auckland Harbour, caused some snap ‘n crackle on the diplomatic front, that’s for sure. 

At first, the French denied involvement. It became an increasingly difficult argument to sustain. Two covert security operatives – both of them French – were apprehended shortly after the two explosions by New Zealand police. 

The operatives were charged with arson, intent to commit arson, destruction of property and murder, pleading guilty to manslaughter in their trial. They were sentenced to ten years in a New Zealand jail. Diplomatic initiatives from the French, however, ensured the two only spent two years on Harp Island, close to Tahiti in French Polynesia, which – get this – was the island used as a base by the French for their Pacific nuclear testing.

The more the New Zealand public found out about the episode, the more outraged they became. They learned through the media that the entire covert operation was codenamed “Opération Satanique” and it was aimed at putting paid to the Rainbow Warrior’s mischief for once and for all.

As the weeks unfolded, the New Zealand public learned of French spies posing as tourists; they learned of the infiltration of Greenpeace’s Auckland office; they learned of French security operatives sailing across the Pacific on yachts as they made their getaway. They learned of the French foreign minister’s resignation.

It was the most exciting news story in New Zealand since a group of rugby players with names like Jock and Andy dressed in trousers flared at the ankles slipped out of the country on a clandestine operation to South Africa. 

When members of the visiting French rugby team, including the management, visited the French bombers in prison in New Zealand, the public became even more outraged. You had to admit, though, the visit added a nice touch of spice to Fitzpatrick’s debut Test. Fitzy’s debut Test also happened to be Kirk’s first Test as skipper. Kirk and Kirwan, let’s not forget, being the only two high-profile players not to go to South Africa with the Cavaliers.

The team Kirk captained (and Fitzy played in) was called the Baby Blacks and, as we’ve seen, they beat the French that day in Christchurch. The win was probably a fluke. Fitzpatrick has subsequently talked of each scrum feeling like you were being tumbled around endlessly in a washing machine, except you got dirtier as the match progressed, not cleaner.

After the win against the French in Christchurch Kirk made the off-the-cuff remark that perhaps some of the Baby Blacks had an All Black future ahead of them. The comment wasn’t appreciated by the Cavaliers serving their two-match ban.

When they came back after their ban had ended, Kirk was still skipper, and the growly old forwards remembered the young whippersnapper’s comments. They also remembered that Kirk hadn’t toured South Africa. He was too clean to be trusted. Never trust a back.

And, anyway, he was one of those fancy dans who use words larger than “hello” and “goodbye”. They did what a good pack of forwards do, and formed a huddle against him. Kirk, the goody-two-shoes scrumhalf who had the temerity to be educated, was shut out. 

The All Black selectors watched all this. The away tour to France of which the “Battle of Nantes” was to be the highlight, was coming up. They had a dilemma. Choosing Kirk would not be popular with the players, although he was a hero with the public. If he wasn’t skipper, did they drop him entirely? He was their first-choice scrumhalf. And, unlike many in the touring side to France, he had actually been in an All Black side who had beaten them.

In the end, they compromised. Kirk was relieved of the captaincy, which went to Hobbs, but toured France anyway. In age-old fashion – selectors tend not to have any balls – no-one bothered to tell him. He was not a happy man – because he found out while listening to the radio – but he toured anyway.

The Battle of Nantes had a lovely coda. As the All Blacks drowned their sorrows at the bar, beginning to forget about how Shelford had dropped his balls an hour or two earlier, tongues began to loosen. 

They told Kirk he was an asshole. He should have joined the Cavaliers in South Africa after the cancellation of the official tour. That he hadn’t, meant he’d taken advantage of them to further his personal aims to become All Black skipper. Kirk listened and told them it wasn’t like that at all. They drunk some more, made up and prepared to depart for home.

The inaugural Rugby World Cup was hosted in New Zealand and Australia the following year. It was a quaint affair by today’s standards, with drum majorettes and a charmingly low-key opening ceremony. 

After all the upheaval, the cancelled official tour of South Africa, the tour by the Cavaliers and the emergence of Fitzpatrick, Kirwan and Kirk, the times had been tumultuous. It was an opportunity to take stock. Shelford, a Maori, taught the All Blacks the meaning behind the haka. He gently insisted they learn to do it properly.

With Kirk as captain, Kirwan on the wing and Buck back in the saddle, the All Blacks played against France in the 1987 World Cup final, winning it 29-9. On the eve of the final they remembered what had happened in the Battle of Nantes. We don’t know for sure but the French might have remembered it to. They might have thought: “We won the battle but it doesn’t mean we’ve won the war.”

Errata: the reference to crew members on the Rainbow Warrior listening to LPs by the Doors and the Jimi Hendrix Experience referred to earlier is a moment of flagrant mischief and poor taste, unsupported by the historiographic record. Such brazen irreverence is damaging to academic notions of truth and veracity, which we always try to uphold. 

It will not happen again anytime soon, although it may happen as soon as next week’s episode. We have to have fun, after all, because if we have fun you’ll have fun listening to us. The creators of this podcast reserve the right to decide.

Ends.