Location
De Montfort University
From the Racing Club and the Stade Francais in Paris to Bordeaux, Toulouse and Beziers, Bayonne and a host of other great teams from the South-West, the French love their rugby! France was the only country to play in the ‘Home internationals’ in the twentieth century when the ‘Five Nations’ became a fixture in our national sporting calendar. The holding of the Rugby Union World Cup in France this year provides an ideal opportunity for De Montfort University’s International Centre for Sports History and Culture to host an exploration and celebration of this special sporting relationship and to reflect on the roots of the game in Britain.
Speakers and Papers
‘One Hundred Years On: celebrating William Webb Ellis in 1923’ – Dilwyn Porter (ICSHC Emeritus Professor)
‘So Long Marianne: The 1931 expulsion of France from rugby’s Five Nations’ – Tony Collins (ICSHC Emeritus Professor)
‘The Leicester Tigers Archive in DMU Special Collections’ – Katharine Short (DMU Special Collections)
‘Barette in France’ – Lydia Furse (Independent Researcher and ICSHC PhD graduate)
‘France as a Bridge: The French Influence on the Advancement of Rugby in Southwest Europe – A Case Study of Catalonia’ – Maria Pasarello Clerice (Universitat de Vic; Universitat Central de Catalunya; (ICSHC Visiting Research Fellow for November 2023)
‘Following the French? Big money clubs in the English Championship’ – Adrian Smith (University of Southampton Emeritus Professor)
For more information and to register, please see the below link. Ticket sales will close 1 hour before the event starts.
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/from-leicester-to-the-rugby-world-cup-tickets-712947825137
Please contact the DMU Events Office on eventsoffice@dmu.ac.uk if you have any questions.