Coupe du Monde

For the last month the sports news has been dominated by the Rugby World Cup, an event that I suspect has been getting slightly less press coverage in the United States than here. Adding to the local hysteria is that France is the host for the games, several of which have in fact occurred in Lyon’s Stade de Gerland. Whenever I have heard drunken people singing the Marseillaise outside of my window, I have known that La France is in another game.

Surprisingly, the US has indeed fielded a team and is participating. Shockingly, we have not made the finals. Julien told me that since the US team members must hold down day jobs, they seemed to tire more easily. We lost to all the other teams in our pool, even Tonga and Samoa.

The Friday before last I made the mistake of trying to meet up with someone at an Irish Pub down in Place Carnot at the same time as the France-Ireland game. The French don’t really do sportsbars, so they crowd into Irish pubs to watch sporting events, which was pissing off the Irish, who were already feeling pissy because Ireland was losing the game. Les Bleus creamed the Irish in that game. It was a sad day in the Irish Corner Pub.