Sèbastien Chabal at the time of Bourgoin
Bourgoin will be Italy’s base camp during the 2023 French World Cup. The news will be made official by the Fir in the coming days. The town, one of the historic bastions of rugby in South-East France and the cradle of Club Sportif Bourgoin-Jallieu, is located along the road that connects Grenoble to Lyon. The choice was made after the inspection carried out at the end of last November by the coach Kieran Crowley and the team manager Giovanbattista Venditti.. Villefranche-sur-Saone, Bourg-en-Bresse and a third location in the Rhone-Alpes department were also visited and considered.
The Azzurri will train at the stadium Pierre-Rayon, home of Bourgoin, and two or three days before the matches they will move to the cities that will host them. The town, which does not reach 30,000 inhabitants, is strategic with respect to the venues of the Poule A matches: Saint-Etienne (9o km), where the debut will be on 9 September at 13 against Africa 1; Nice, the farthest (almost 400 km), site of the match against Uruguay on 20 September at 5.45 pm; And Décines-Charpieu, eastern outskirts of Lyon (40 km), where they will compete first with New Zealand (Friday 29 September, 9 pm) and then France (Friday 6 October, 9 pm). New Zealand will be based in Lyon, Uruguay in Avignon, France in Saint-Cloud, near Paris.
After the golden years – in 1997 he won the Challenge Cup and was beaten by Toulouse in the final of the French championship – the Bourgoin now plays in Nationale, the third division of transalpine rugby. Several past blues have played with the blue-grenades, from the third row and captain of the Seventies Umberto Cossara to Doro Quagliofrom Ezio Galon to the Italo-Argentines Federico Pucciariello And Alberto Di Bernardoup to the second Italian-South African line Carlo Alberto Del Fava. Among the greats of French rugby who became international in Bourgoin there are Sébastien Chabal (born in Beaumont-lès-Valence but raised in rugby at CSBJ) Pascal Papé, Morgan Parra, Julien Bonnaire, Lionel Nallet.