Vannes are making a fight of it in their debut French Top 14 season. Raphaël Jucobin was there for Rugby World to savour the first-ever top-flight game played in Brittany
Any Breton worth their salt will tell you that their homeland, far from a reputation for dreary weather, basks in warm-weather microclimates dotted all around the north-western peninsula. It was an intermittent deluge, though, that greeted Toulouse fans arriving in Vannes for their Top 14 season opener – an early sign that this would be anything but a typical away day for the southerners.
Tucked away from the Gulf of Morbihan, the inland sea in the south of Brittany that lends its name to the département as a whole, Vannes is built around a port which serves as the starting point for excursions into the bay. The Île aux Moines and the Île d’Arz are the most popular of the 40-odd islands, freckled with bronze-age megaliths, artisan outposts and seafront cabins. The Rhuys peninsula, which wraps around the south of the bay, features oyster farms and a castle overlooking the cove.
But the place to be on match day – especially for the home team’s first top-flight encounter in a 74-year history – is back up the river Marle and within the city walls. The town’s old ramparts are an apt place to start a tour of Vannes, particularly before the pre-match preparations enter full swing. The fortifications capture 2,000 years’ worth of history, having first been built by the Romans, and then continually reinforced until the 14th century.
Although partially dismantled under Louis XIV to raise war funds, enough of the ramparts’ towers and gates remain to keep tourists occupied (fending off enemies, though, might be a tall order these days). Walk under the arch of the granite Porte Prison tower, and you’ll reach the sloping Place des Lices, a former venue for jousting tournaments. It now hosts a biweekly market where local products include oysters, mussels and jars of salted butter caramel.
To the north, the mediaeval town’s pedestrianised streets wind around the vividly-coloured half timber-framed houses, with the gothic Saint-Pierre cathedral nestled in between.
Boom town: fans of Vannes and Toulouse make some noise on a day with a festive atmosphere (AFP/Getty)
Those who would prefer to save their energy for the match can catch the Petit train, which meanders its way around the cobbled streets and ticks off the main sights in just over half an hour. As kick-off approaches, though, fans invariably flock to the old port. Ahead of the first-ever Top 14 match to be held in Brittany, the bars were already filling up by lunchtime.
Le Gambetta was decked out in club colours for the day, while on the other side of the Place Gambetta – which forms a semi-circle at the far end of the port – staff at the Brasserie l’Océan sported shirts commemorating the team’s promotion to the top flight.
Further down the eastern flank of the port, directly opposite the stadium, locals and visitors have also gathered at Café Ferdinand, and at Le Vieux Safran next door.
Sitting at Café Ferdinand, 23-year-old Titouan, who has followed the club across the country for the past five seasons, senses a potential upset against the 23-time French champions. He boasts that “the whole of Brittany is behind us, even if most of us in the stadium will be Vannetais, of course.”
The waterfront establishments inevitably draw the biggest crowds, but it’s at the Bar des Sports where you’ll find many of the old-timers. Affectionately referred to as ‘Chez Jeanine’, the pub serves as a more homely but equally bustling alternative to the aforementioned joints, and sits a stone’s throw away from the Stade de la Rabine.
Local support: the Bar des Sports, a haven for old-timers, is a stone’s throw from the stadium (RC Vannes)
The Jeanine in question has lived in Vannes for 36 years but is originally from Saint-Étienne, which would explain the unlikely combination of green football flags and navy blue rugby scarves that adorn the walls. From behind the bar, she has witnessed the town readily embrace its status as Breton rugby’s standard-bearer over the last decade, amid the local football team’s plunge as far down as the seventh division.
“The town has woken up,” she exclaims, as the first customers begin to arrive with five hours to go until kick-off. “When there’s a rugby match on, it benefits everyone, especially the local business, from the bars, the restaurants, the shops and the hotels.”
My ball: Toulouse win a lineout (RC Vannes)
As we see an Italian tourist optimistically ask around for last-minute tickets, a Montpellier fan who recently settled in the area post up at the bar, and catch a few Welsh accents in the background, it becomes evident that the RC Vannes phenomenon has spilled over far beyond the city walls.
Rugby has done more than simply fill the void left by the football team’s demise, and last summer’s expeditious season ticket campaign can attest to that. At one point, more than 50,000 people were in the online queue for one of the 9,000 seats, causing the club’s website to crash.
The server-crushing demand has left the rest to fight it out on a weekly basis for the remaining 3,000 spots in the stadium – much to the chagrin of some hitherto regulars. Any leftovers on match day (not that there were any for the Toulouse match!) are sold from the small, red-brick hut in front of the stadium that serves as the ticket office.
The timber-framed club shop was taken by storm when it swung its doors open in mid-afternoon, with the line for merchandise pouring out onto the street. Standing outside the boutik, as the Breton signage reads, is 80-year-old fan Robert Gallardon, a native of Saint-Brieuc in the north of the peninsula. Robert recalls playing for his home town’s rugby team against Vannes back in the late 1960s, soon after the latter club’s inception.
“We played at a ground where there were no dressing rooms. We would wash ourselves in a river pitchside,” he says, adding that he used to face the club’s former president, the late Jean-Louis Bouché, on a regular basis.
These days, he has no qualms over supporting his former rivals, and intends to make the trip for every match this season. “I’ve seen how rugby has developed in this town; it’s gone from strength to strength and people in the surrounding area love the sport. Over in Saint-Brieuc, we’ve remained a small local club.”
The fervour is the same across the age groups. Malo, a 21-year-old Breton who has followed the team since the Fédérale One days, is one of the fans who would watch the season opener from one of the bars outside La Rabine. While he’s pleased to see the club grow and attract fans from further afield, he does lament being among those who have been priced out.
“It’s a shame because we were on the website a whole three hours before the season tickets went on sale. Some of us won’t be able to go to all of the games. Being able to rally the whole of Brittany behind us is our great strength, but it does mean that tickets sell out quickly.”
Any advice from Malo for first-timers coming from across the Channel? Throw yourself into it – wave the Breton flag, pick up a galette-saucisse, and learn (at least some of) the lyrics of the anthem. “If we’re getting English people coming to our games, it shows that something is starting to happen down here.”
The galette-saucisse – a grilled pork sausage wrapped in a buckwheat crêpe – is the popular match-day staple, a street food which, on the national stage, is more commonly associated with the Rennes football team. Various crêperies cater to match goers along the rue du Port leading to the stadium, although many prefer to pick up a plate of oysters from a stand in the corner of La Rabine instead.
For a sweeter option, the go-to is a Kouign-amann, the thick buttery pastry emblematic of the region, a slice of the similarly rich Gâteau Breton or a Palet Breton biscuit. The club appears to have no trouble carrying the weight of representing an entire region on its shoulders.
French fare: seafood at Stade de la Rabine, which Wales will visit in the U20 Six Nations (RC Vannes)
As kick-off approaches, the flags of Brittany’s nine traditional provinces are paraded down the port and into the stadium, parting the sea of Vannes fans lining up for their pre-match galettes and beer. Players from all 66 of the region’s rugby clubs were also invited to the match, reinforcing the sense that the Bleu et Blanc are the pioneers for the sport’s growing popularity in France’s north-western peninsula.
Few rugby grounds can boast as grand an entrance as the Rabine’s west stand, with fans shuffling across the cobblestones and through the gates of an 18th-century covenant-turned-music school. The building directly faces the port and is where most fans congregate ahead of the match, although a contingent also waves the home team through a sea of flags at the opposite end of the stadium, on higher ground. The stars of Toulouse, meanwhile, opt for a more low-key arrival through another one of the entrances.
Back on the waterfront, Vannes fans mingle with their Toulouse counterparts and reminisce about the promotion play-off win over Grenoble at Ernest-Wallon a few months earlier. The only aspect of the evening that would sour the occasion, it seems, was the absence of long-time head coach Jean-Noël Spitzer – who has been in charge since 2005 – due to a suspension for inadvertently preventing a doping test last season.
A chapel to the right of the main entrance serves as the conservatory’s auditorium. On match days, however, it’s the stadium behind it that becomes the concert hall for a 12,000-strong rousing rendition of Bro Gozh Ma Zadoù – “Old Land of my Fathers”. The anthem of Brittany, which shares both tune and title with its Welsh and Cornish counterparts, has echoed in the stadium before every match since 2016, when the club was first promoted to the second tier.
Landing craft: Romain Ntamack catches under pressure from Vannes wing Filipo Nakosi (AFP/Getty)
The Breton twists on French rugby traditions are ubiquitous. Instead of the usual banda – a staple of rugby matches in the south-western heartland and beyond – it’s the Bagad orchestra who provide the soundtrack to matches in Vannes. The band, made up of bagpipes (or binioù in the Breton language), bombards and drums, accompanies the players on their way out of the tunnel before taking up its position in the stands.
Joining the Bagad in bringing the noise are the Kerlenn Gwened, a group of fans that make up the most vocal section of La Rabine, up in the Tribune Lucien-Jaffré, the stadium’s south stand. Although less rooted in tradition than the bagpipe band – the group was only formally founded last year – the Kerlenn Gwened is key to keeping the volume high at La Rabine.
The fanfare only draws to a sudden halt when either one of the teams’ kickers is stepping up – enough of a rarity in French rugby that it was met with gushing praise from the Toulouse delegation after the match. “It’s not like this everywhere, I have a lot of admiration for this crowd,” Thomas Ramos went on to comment. The fact that Vannes stands peerless in the Breton rugby landscape, free of the esprit-du-clocher-infused local rivalries that characterise the southern clubs, may be one reason for the strikingly well-behaved support.
Unfortunately for the hosts, the sudden silence benefited Ramos more often than their own kicker in Maxime Lafage, with the France full-back firing the visitors into a commanding lead by half-time.
The continental champions predictably pulled away after the break. But La Rabine remained rapturous, not least when Mako Vunipola went over for the hosts’ first try in the top flight, and fellow summer signing Christie van der Merwe scored their second ten minutes later. The eventual 43-18 defeat did little to quell the festive atmosphere, and the Gwenn-ha-du flags continued to flutter from the stands.
COSTING UP AN AWAY DAY IN VANNES
* Trains from Paris are around €60 return, usually changing at Rennes
* For UK-based fans, it costs around £50 to fly direct from London to Nantes, which is 90 minutes from Vannes by train
* A galette rustique and a bowl of cider from the Océan is €14
* A galette from the Billig Breizh creperie in front of the stadium starts from €3.40 and goes up when adding ham, cheese, fried eggs…
* A pint from the Bar des Sports is €6.50
* Tickets for a match at the Stade de la Rabine start from €18 for general sale, with most tickets around €31 (£26)
It was the late Sunday kick-off time, more than the result itself, which left little room for the festivities to continue into the night, but fans would otherwise regroup along the port to see out the day. Despite the weather, the visitors were won over, even those who made the trip without a ticket, having come just to experience the atmosphere of an away day in Brittany.
“We arrived here yesterday and within three hours we had made friends with a group of local fans. It’s a lot like Toulouse in the sense that you can talk to people out on the street about rugby. You get the feeling that the Pays du rugby is growing,” explains Nathan, a 28-year-old Rouge-et-Noir fan.
Vannes, though, are not just here for a charm offensive. Exactly how long French rugby’s newest outpost remains in the top flight remains to be seen, but the team’s early results – which include a 23-14 win at heavyweights La Rochelle – promise at the very least a valiant fight to stay up. In any case, the passionate match-day atmosphere and regional twists on rugby traditions are here to stay, and an away trip to Brittany is fast establishing itself as a cornerstone of the French rugby season.
“We have nothing to be embarrassed about tonight,” one member of the Kerlenn Gwened concludes, looking on from the now dimly-lit Place Gambetta. “Either way, we’re champions of France – and we can keep saying that for the rest of the year.”
This feature first appeared in the December 2024 issue of Rugby World and is part of a series on must-visit rugby destinations.
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