Hello there !
I'm a french supporter of RCT "
Rugby Club Toulonnais" and I was there when Sonny made his 1st steps on our training field!
Ican easily understand your sadness then your anger towards Toulon and SBW
But here in France, you have to know that RugbyXIII ain't that popular ! I would say it's almost unknown ! Quite never TV broadcasted, only 2 teams wellknowned in France : Perpignan Dragons and Olympique of Toulouse thats all !
We're a XV rugby team and our club was in second division last season with players like aussie's George Gregan, former All Blacks ' Andrew Mehrtens & Anton Oliver, also 2007 World champion South African Springbok's Victor Matfield, and 2003 World Champion Brit's Dan Luger...and many other excellent players like 2005's best rugby sevens All Black in the world Orene Ai'i...
This year, we reach Top14, the 1st french division and our President Mourad Boudjellal wanted a good recruitment with younger players more willing to stay and play the next seasons.
Our president is really a fan of our world wide star coach : Tana Umaga and he gave him full power ("white card") for choosing his players !
In France we say : "Il n'y a pas de fumée sans feu" : ie :
there is no smoke without fire" so I don't know if this means the same in your country but it means that if SBW came a left his team, his teammates, etc...from a day to the next 1...he didn't woke up suddenly and decided to run away !
In france, there were topics (on our fan forum) about his coming for more than a month ago, I guess after this it's a matter of agent's deal.
If his agent told some other SBW was willing to leave Bulldogs and Australia, it was SBW's choice and his agent fault. Don't blame our country and specially our team for what's happening now !
This is not the 1st time a NRL player is leaving for XV; Tuqiri, Sailor did it before !
Now I also understand your point of views, Sonny seems to be a great player (thanks to Youtube !!;-)) I hope he'll be able to assume his acts, I wish him the best in our country !!
I've made some pictures of his 1st steps and afternoon training there is the link :
http://flickr.com/photos/taneroa/
Toulon is a great place of Rugby ! This year is our Century celebration !
Toulon is the only great rugby in southern east of France but with a good old tradition ! On of the journalist from Australia here in Toulon; I mean David Murray from Daily Telegraph of Sydney, wrote a very rough and bad article towads Toulon ,the town and it's inhabitants !
I saw him yesterday and he started to apologize about this, as he told me australians were so angry about SBW escape...but this is no reason ! He also wrote he was his wallet stolen, a friend of mine told me this happened in fact to french reporters workig for some australian medias,and he took this story for himself in order to discredit our country, our town our public and team !! A real shame !!
Well it's late now and I got to go to work ! I'll be back this evenning (french time) to tell you a bit more about how do we feel for SBW 's beeing here !
I can only tell you that for his 1st training session, he really made a good sensation !