Glory days fade into murder for rugby's quiet giant

By CATHERINE FIELD

PARIS - In any other circumstances it would have been a provincial murder, the story of a husband who killed his wife, enough salacious details to fill a couple of columns on an inside page at the height of summer but no more.

This murder, though, is different. For the killer is the former captain of France's rugby team, Marc Cecillon - the "quiet man", the "gentle giant of the oval ball", whose life took a terrible downward turn.

The drama unfolded last Saturday at a barbecue hosted by a couple of Cecillon's friends in the town of Saint-Savin, near the south-eastern city of Lyons. Most of the 60 guests were members of a local rugby club who had come to celebrate the end of the season.

By 11pm Cecillon, 45, was stinking drunk and got involved in a squabble with the hostess, whom he slapped in the face, giving her a black eye, say police.

Her husband showed him to the door. Cecillon came back half an hour later, apparently calm, saying he wanted to say goodnight to everyone, but in fact he had a loaded .357 Magnum stashed in the pocket of his shorts.

He mingled for a while, then opened fire on his wife, Chantal, 44, hitting her five times in the head and throat as the partygoers looked on in horror. She died instantly.

Police took a blood sample from Cecillon - his blood-alcohol level was more than four-and-a-half times the legal drink-driving limit, said public prosecutor Gilles Proisy-Le Cocq.

Cecillon was so drunk that apparently it was only when he woke up in a police cell the following day that he learned he had killed his spouse. He has admitted the killing.

The drama has brought turmoil to Bourgoin-Jallieu, where Cecillon's 1.92m, 110kg frame was revered. He played in the town's club for 23 years, steering it from obscurity to the European club title in 1997-98, and his name adorns one wing of the local stadium.

He played as lock, then flanker, but was at his best at number eight, providing the drive for the French pack during the first half of the 1990s.

He won the first of his 46 national caps in 1988 and captained Les Bleus five times, a role he eventually shunned because of the pressure from the media and his shyness about having to make speeches at banquets.

He was in the French team that was pipped 15-19 in the 1995 World Cup semifinal by the Springboks.

His reputation was burnished by a biography, Marc Cecillon: L'homme Tranquille du Rugby Francais (The quiet man of French rugby) by Guy Leduc, in which leading French players of a decade ago paid tribute.

But the shock of the killing is now loosening local tongues, and the clubby, small-town silence and journalistic chumminess that protected Cecillon's reputation is crumbling.

What emerges is the picture of a fragile man with an anger problem and a capacity for drink who found a meaning for life through top-flight rugby. It gave him discipline, camaraderie and fame, and all that faded away when he retired, leaving him utterly adrift.

"He used to revel in the after-match parties," a local sports reporter said.

"It was all binge drinking after the game with the other players and then heading out to nightclubs for fun. He would go way over the top, and the only person who could rein him in was his father."

After leaving Bourgoin-Jallieu in 1999, Cecillon played on for four more years as player-coach for a minor professional club, Beaurepaire, eventually hanging up his boots last year. At a loose end, he was taken on by Bourgoin-Jallieu in February this year as "general manager", essentially a figurehead job for meeting and greeting sponsors, supporters and officials from other clubs.

Pierre Martinet, the chairman of Bourgoin-Jallieu, admitted Cecillon appeared to have problems adjusting to retirement.

"I have known Marc for 12 years. I often saw him with Chantal, who was very proud of him.

"I never noticed problems between them and I never personally saw him drunk.

"But it is clear that his recent lack of activity tended to encourage him to drink," Martinet said.

"Normally, Marc is very timid and reserved," said a young woman who was at the fateful barbecue party. "But if he drinks too much, it's like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Everyone knows you shouldn't go anywhere near Marc when he's had one too many."

The couple and their two daughters, Angelique and Celine, 24 and 22, lived in a farmhouse that Cecillon had rebuilt himself. As his drinking worsened, so did the marriage problems.

"There was a lot of disputes," according to a police investigator.

Cecillon tried to cash in on his reputation by selling a brand of sportswear, MC8, based on his name and favourite player number, with his wife as sales manager. But that flopped and his wife took up a steady job to earn money as a medical secretary.

As the money and fame grow in post-amateur French rugby, so do the risks for players who have to adjust to ordinary life after their time in the spotlight.

There are successes, like former French fullback Serge Blanco, who has done well with his '15' brand of leisurewear, and Jean-Pierre Rives, who is an accomplished sculptor.

Others use their fame, their savings and local contacts to set up a sports shop or some other business, or get recycled in the sports industry as a roving ambassador or TV commentator.

But there are also many more who can be found almost every night in the clubroom bar, clutching a tankard of beer or downing a Pastis, as they recount yet again their glory days.