I also think this needs setting in a wider historical context. It's clear now that the famed French Resistance was much smaller than portrayed after the war. A realistic estimate is that 60,000 people were involved in actively fighting against the Nazi regime, compared to the 2 million or so who carried the cards issued by the French Government to give them special privileges as people who had resisted the occupation. This is hardly a surprise, of course.taipan said:(...)
For anyone to suggest that as the French had an exceptional rugby league side in the early fifties that, QED this would continue,ignores the realities of the effects and after effects of the Vichy/union fandangle during the war years banning rugby league.Weak administration aside if you cant have your sport officially recognised,cant get it in the schools,get no govt financial support,have all your assets handed over to an opposing sport,have a large early 40s bank balance disappear (one can only guess where LOL),you can't grow your game or strengthen your game.Any sports administrator in Oz would agree,except those union apologists who tend to make guest appearances.
Where this is relevant for the history of Rugby League in France is that between 1945 and the early 60's, the myth of French resistance was swallowed and promoted by all. Acts of resistance were glorified.
It's therefore no suprise that the banned game, the game which obviously stood against everything the Nazi regime stood for simply because they were the ones who tried to ban it, benefited from the resistance bandwagon jumpers. RL's geographic location in the so called "Free France" (Vichy was known as the "Free France government - basically the South of France but without the western coastline) also assisted as it was played in the areas which did resist the occupation most actively. As people who had resisted, your favourite sport would of course be the one which was supressed by the Nazi's - leading to the upsurge in popularity and brief success of the sport and national team in the 50's.
Things changed in the 60's, though the writing was on the cards in the late 1950's. There is no doubt that the clubs' failure to invest in grass roots development made it easier for the game to decline (with the difficulty in investing coming, in part, from the sequestration of assets during the war), but looking at the wider society the new generation started to ask tough questions about what really happened during the war, and the "demythicalisation" of the French Resistance began. In this context, Rugby League again became more marginalised, with De Gaulle's promotion of Rugby Union, and the need to re-unify a troubled country becoming the main concern for the majority of people.
I haven't seen a history of French RL dealing with the post war period and so I can't add flesh to the bones of the above theory when talking about RL specifically, but you have to remember that although it sounds theoretical, we are talking about a nation in deep turmoil and going through a period of soul-searching as it struggled to understand the occupation. This touched the whole of French society, of which RL was, of course, only a small part.