France has been in the finals of the World Cup of football (soccer) three times during the past five Cups, winning once in 2018, four years after we moved here. Very big deal. We watched the finals at a local bar. After the win, a bonfire on the street melted the tar, leaving a scar in a main thoroughfare that remains to this day. The experience was a heady one, particularly since I already knew a bit about the sport. My first broken bone came as a result of a collision playing soccer (football) during a grade school match about 65 years ago. Even so, before the match in 2018 I decided that it was necessary to brush up on the sport. As a result, eight years ago I wrote the following:
I don't have a television and I don't miss it. But the World Cup has started and my European friends will be paying careful attention, particularly my Brit friends starting at noon tomorrow. So I found a site that streams all of the matches for free and I am trying to pay attention. Here's what I have learned so far.
Things get going on a very nice lawn in front of groups of drunken men in color coordinated clothing. Women can be in the stadium, but only if they don't wear shirts. Meanwhile teams of men who forgot to shave kick a ball back and forth, sometimes even kicking it with their heads. The object of the game seems to be to find creative ways to fall down and, if you are standing, finding creative ways to kick the ball past your own goal tender and into your own net.
It seems that the world champions lost convincingly to the Netherlands, apparently due to superior cannabis. At least I think that's right. I can't understand the announcers. They're speaking British.
Although Quarante seriously celebrated the France's World Cup football (soccer) championship, the truth is that this region of France is not football (soccer) country. We are, rather, a hotbed of rugby. Two of the top three pro rugby clubs with the most national championships all time in France come from our region - Toulouse and Beziers. And as an amateur club, our very own boys won the national championship for their tier a couple of years ago. As a result, I clearly had to brush up on the rules.
Like football (soccer), rugby is played on a manicured lawn about the size and shape of an American football (not soccer) field, except that the netted goals are replaced by goal posts that, you guessed it, are similar to the goal posts used in American football (not soccer). The game begins with the team in black performing scenes from Michael Caine's movie ZULU while the team in white warms up by attempting to swivel their heads back and forth, difficult to do considering that they have no necks. Eventually, a ball looking suspiciously like an American football (not soccer) is put in play. The teams throw and kick the ball back and forth until they get tired, fall in a heap, grunt and groan with their heads next to each others bums, until the ball squirts out from underneath the pile and the running and kicking begins again. When the referee gets tired, he allows one of the teams to score by trying to kick the ball through the goal posts. The other way to score is by belly-flopping, ball in hand, into the opponent's end zone. Points are awarded for style and degree of difficulty. The winning team is the team ending the game with the most intact ears.
Somehow, I don't think that my friends in Quarante, my French friends in Quarante, will appreciate the humor.
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