If the quarter-final between France and South Africa promises to be fierce on the pitch, Sunday October 15, it will be much more festive and colorful in the stands. Since the start of the Rugby World Cup, supporters have shown rare inventiveness in their choice of outfits to go to the stadium. The traditional rooster hats or blue, white and red makeup pale in comparison to South Africans dressed as a tyrannosaurus, French people dressed as Pinocchio or Italians dressed as the Pope.
With his friends from Brive-la-Gaillarde like him, Pierre Beyne Markarian encouraged the French team during the matches against New Zealand and Italy with a replica of coach Fabien Galthié’s emblematic glasses and a polo shirt, the specially made for the occasion. And it was a former international, Damien Traille, who presented them with their costumes during a special ceremony on the day of the opening match against the All Blacks on September 8. “It caused quite a reaction in the stadium and on social networks,” rejoices the supporter, for whom the attention paid to the outfit “creates emulation: we see more and more inventive disguises in the stands, that change from Asterix and Obelix. » For the quarter-finals, they will come dressed as Saint-Tropez gendarmes.
Alongside them, they will undoubtedly see South African supporters dressed much less. The favorite outfit of Sprinboks fans is none other than swimming trunks, which they have the players autograph at the end of the matches. This is a tribute to their scrum half Faf de Klerk, who celebrated the 2019 world champion title with this minimalist outfit in the colors of the rainbow nation. The image of the player shaking hands with Prince Harry had left its mark and the supporters seized it one world championship later.
These images are widely relayed on social networks and in the media, nourishing the creativity of supporters. “Rugby culture values the festive aspect, as if it were about building a world unlike the media image of the football public,” analyzes Ludovic Lestrelin, teacher-researcher at the University of Caen-Normandie. , author of Sociologie des supporters (La Découverte, 2022), who notes, however, that it is “not entirely specific to rugby”.
“The opportunity is fucking huge.”
If there is a particular audience that symbolizes this festive spirit, it is that of the Irish supporters, who have already marked this World Cup with their cover of Zombie, by the Cranberries. On September 23, during the match against South Africa, a group of fans proudly brandished a slogan that was all the rage on the networks this summer: “The opportunity is fucking huge”, a reference to the much-noticed speech – in sumptuous French – from La Rochelle Irish coach Ronan O’Gara before the Top 14 semi-final against Bordeaux in June. The Irish even joined a demonstration against police violence organized that day in Paris, causing general hilarity.
“The audience understood that they were part of the show. Playing on offbeat elements increases the chances of being covered in the media,” observes Ludovic Lestrelin. And to stand out and do better than the fans of the team opposite, it’s the one-upmanship of the disguise, creating “a kind of festive and humorous rivalry which echoes the rivalry on the field”.
The trend is even stronger in rugby sevens, where costumes are favored by the organizers of international tournaments themselves: “Since the beginning, it has been a tradition to wear costumes or the most “chic” outfit to support his country, displays the Canada Sevens team on its site. This means coming dressed in anything from cowboy boots to a beaver suit. » The Paris tournament, during the 2024 Olympic Games, promises to be even more colorful.