There is a particular kind of sporting happiness that outsiders often misunderstand. Not the chest-thumping stuff or the online nonsense where people suddenly become tactical experts after watching three highlights and half a scrum. Not the unbearable “we are massive” behaviour that makes everyone else mute group chats for a week. Just something calmer and quieter.
You wake up, make a cuppa, look outside at a decent bit of weather, and remember that French rugby currently has both European cups heading home from Bilbao. Earlier in the year, we completed the Six Nations double with both the senior men and the U20s; our clubs are thriving, the academies are producing, coaches are trusted and our talent pool looks absurdly deep (comment made by a South African friend – rare praise indeed !)
And instead of arrogance, what arrives is contentment, a word which I think is the most important word here: not “haha your team is rubbish”. Not superiority. Just the warm feeling that something you care about is healthy, alive, and being done properly even if Toulouse wasn’t a part of it. Part of that feeling is personal too becayse for me, rugby support is never entirely abstract. It’s mates texting during games, sometimes even their mum ! It is people you know involved in clubs; memories attached to players, coaches, away days, stadiums, songs, and old discussions in pubs that somehow still continue twenty years later.
So when French rugby succeeds, it does not feel like a spreadsheet victory. It feels human and as I know only too well, if you support French rugby outside France, you develop a thick skin very quickly. I’ve spent years hearing that French clubs “do not care about Southern hemisphere tours”, that France is “chaotic”, that Top 14 rugby is “all money and no structure”, or that French teams are “unpredictable”. Then suddenly people look up and realise French clubs have been collecting European silverware like a child sweeping arcade tickets into a bucket at Blackpool.
Since 2021, French clubs have dominated the Champions Cup era: Toulouse won in 2021 and 2024. La Rochelle won back-to-back titles in 2022 and 2023. Bordeaux-Bègles added another in 2025 and retained it again this year. Our clubs have repeatedly lifted the Challenge Cup too, with Montpellier, Lyon, Toulon, Stade Français and Clermont all contributing in recent years.
The “French double” of winning both European competitions in the same season has happened multiple times since 2000:
• 2026: Bordeaux-Bègles won the Champions Cup and Montpellier won the Challenge Cup.
• 2023: La Rochelle and Toulon completed the double.
• 2021: Toulouse and Montpellier did it.
• 2016: Toulon and Montpellier.
Then there is the national setup: Winning both the senior men’s Six Nations and the U20 Six Nations in the same year is not just a nice headline. It is one of the clearest indicators that a rugby system is functioning properly from academy to elite level. Our U20s matter – a lot.
People sometimes treat youth rugby as a sort of polite curtain-raiser before “real rugby” begins. But U20 success is often the first visible sign of long-term structural health. France’s investment into academies, physical development, coaching continuity, and player depth has changed the entire ecosystem over the last decade. Something you can see it everywhere now.
A frontline France international gets injured and another genuinely world-class player appears from nowhere looking like he was assembled in a laboratory underneath Marcoussis. There are scrum-halves who would start internationally for most nations yet cannot get into the France matchday squad. That is not normal depth, that’s depth that is the envy of other countries.
The interesting bit psychologically is why this success feels soothing rather than aggressive – there is actual science behind that. Humans experience something called “basking in reflected glory”, where the success of groups we identify with boosts our own emotional state and self-esteem. Sports psychologists have studied this for decades. Supporting successful teams can genuinely increase dopamine activity, improve mood, and create feelings of belonging and stability. But the emotional effect changes depending on the personality of the supporter. People who are deeply insecure often turn sporting success into dominance behaviour. They need everyone else to acknowledge it constantly sometimes every trophy becomes an argument.
More secure supporters usually experience something softer like I feel today; pride without arrogance. happiness without needing permission. It is not “we are better than everyone”. It is more: “This thing I care about is flourishing, and I’m glad to see good people rewarded.” This emotional difference matters.
Especially in rugby, where identity still feels local and tribal in a healthier way than many sports. Clubs are connected to places where we have watched matches. coaches become symbols of regions; fans remember academy players from when they were teenagers getting flattened on muddy side pitches – their former grass roots rugby mates who made it at elite level.
Even stylistically, French rugby carries emotional weight because the Top 14 is exhausting, chaotic, emotional, occasionally completely unhinged, and somehow still capable of producing astonishing technical rugby. One weekend you watch a tactical masterclass. The next weekend somebody throws a 25-metre offload while being folded in half by two enormous men named something like Jean-Baptiste Volcano. And yet beneath the chaos there is now real structure.
French rugby used to have a reputation for emotional volatility. Brilliant one week, catastrophic the next. That stereotype did not appear from nowhere. But modern French rugby has added systems and conditioning to the natural flair that always existed. That is why this era feels different; the talent was always there and now the consistency is there too. Which is why waking up with this quiet sense of satisfaction feels earned rather than accidental – happiness for the sport in a country where I was brought up and that feels special.
Our clubs and national teams are strong.
The youth systems are thriving
My mates are smiling.
And this morning’s Yorkshire Gold tastes just a notch better this morning…
