March 22, 200817 yr Author ^^ yes /monthly_03_2008/post-6862-0-1446015438-86174_thumb.jpg" data-fileid="2641683" alt="post-6862-0-1446015438-86174_thumb.jpg" data-ratio="133.53"> /monthly_03_2008/post-6862-0-1446015440-62591_thumb.jpg" data-fileid="2641704" alt="post-6862-0-1446015440-62591_thumb.jpg" data-ratio="77.4">
March 22, 200817 yr Author Sport & Style Mag /monthly_03_2008/post-6862-0-1446015441-91588_thumb.jpg" data-fileid="2641837" alt="post-6862-0-1446015441-91588_thumb.jpg" data-ratio="64.58">
March 22, 200817 yr Author /monthly_03_2008/post-6862-0-1446015445-60717_thumb.jpg" data-fileid="2641879" alt="post-6862-0-1446015445-60717_thumb.jpg" data-ratio="128.93">
March 22, 200817 yr Author The big interview: Frederic Michalak (Time Newspaper UK) old & very interesting interview, he intrigues me a lot The Zinedine Zidane of French rugby steps from his car wearing jeans, a black sweater, a silver- plated necklace and ears adorned with diamond studs. It’s a Monday morning at the Ernest Wallon stadium in Toulouse and he is 35 minutes late for the interview. “Sorry,” he says, extending a hand. “My girlfriend had to wake me. My alarm didn’t go off.” It is not exactly the perfect start, but I’ve been expecting this. A friend has warned me about Frederic Michalak: “You’ll have your work cut out. He’s not a Blanco or a Galthie or one of the old school. He’s the archetypal modern rugby professional, pleasant enough to deal with but, well, un peu fade. I think the word in English is dull.” But sometimes friends get it wrong . . . He leads the way across the car park to a sunny corner of the grandstand and explains that things have been hectic since he got back from the World Cup. Every morning, a fresh batch of fan mail drops through his letterbox with requests for autographs, messages of support and invitations from girls who’ve fallen in love with him. “Dear Fred, I really admire you.” “Dear Fred, I find you divinement beau.” “Dear Fred, I’ve been struck by a bolt of lightning.” “Dear Fred, I’d like to nail you in a ruck.” Michalak’s popularity in Toulouse is Beckhamesque. Two months ago, you couldn’t drive anywhere in the city without running into a billboard plastered with his image. He has a sponsorship deal with Nike, endorses Manix condoms and was recently voted Toulousain of the Year. “How did that feel?” “A bit bizarre,” he replies. “How did you poll in the same award last year?” “I can’t remember.” “Further back?” “Yes.” “So it’s only since the World Cup that you’ve had all this exposure?” “Yes.” “Were you aware of it at the time?” “No. We didn’t read any papers in Australia. My father and my fianc
March 22, 200817 yr Author Since the turn of the year, he has been hounding his teammates at Stade Toulousain to commemorate their win in the European Cup last summer with a tattoo. And not just any tattoo: they should each have the same star — the symbol of the Heineken Cup. Two weeks ago, as they arrived one morning for training, he gathered them round to demonstrate what he had in mind. He removed his shirt, stripped to his shorts and watched their jaws hit the floor in amazement . . . “What have you done?” “I don’t believe it!” “You’ve got to be joking, Fred!” His genitals had been completely shaved. Where had Frederic Michalak had the star engraved? Hazard a guess. Michalak’s jackass humour is a legend at the club. In the summer of 1996, when just a boy of 13, he travelled by train to Paris with the club’s schoolboy team to watch Toulouse beat Brive in the final of the French championship. Spirits were high on the journey home and a water fight started. Balloons were inflated with liquid and launched as missiles around the train. A team official decided to investigate the racket in the adjoining carriage. “Stop this nonsense immediately!” he raged, throwing back the door. But Michalak, being Michalak, couldn’t contain himself. He launched another bomb and watched, ecstatic, as it exploded over the official’s head. A furious chase ensued and the official threatened to strangle him and throw him off the team. Eight years later, nothing much has changed. Last year, on the eve of a Heineken Cup game, an enraged Fabien Pelous went after Michalak with a fork and stabbed him in the hand after he had ignored repeated warnings from the captain to desist from throwing bread as they waited for dinner. The wound was so deep, Michalak almost missed the game. “It amazes me how much he gets away with,” says Trevor Brennan, the Dubliner who came to Toulouse two years ago and has become a key part of the team. “We stay in the same hotel before home games and he is always up to something . . . leave your mobile phone down for a second and he’ll have changed the language. Leave the room to go for a rub and you’ll come back and find your clothes in the bathtub or your bed soaked in shaving foam.” But isn’t he afraid of messing with the forwards? “He doesn’t give a s***,” Brennan laughs. “Last week he took a fire extinguisher to Yannick Bru! He’s a real character.” But it is how this character was formed that makes him so interesting and provides a sense of a life less ordinary. His admiration for his father: “My father is my example. He’s a bricklayer. All his life he has had it hard, and I wish he could retire. I’ve gone to work a few times with him. It’s a lot easier to earn your living running after a ball.” His love for rugby: “I chose rugby because of the shocks, the tackles, the confrontation. Last year I joined a boxing club in Toulouse and went at it with passion. It’s the lives they’ve lived that makes boxers so strong.” His empathy with children: “I always feel comfortable with children . . . with adults, it’s another story. I struggle sometimes to understand the adult world.”
March 22, 200817 yr Author His philosophy on sport: “The objective in sport is not to push or to be pushed, but avoidance. Because when you avoid a guy you can immediately serve the team. I’ve always tried to be inventive with my ideas and movement; I’ve kept some in reserve; I haven’t used them all.” The emotions that puzzle him: “Hatred, we’ve all got it. It’s all around. You don’t need to speak its name. You don’t know when it will show itself. You keep it for yourself.” The forces that drive him: “In the dressing room, we all derive strength from our experience of life. I think about certain moments that have hurt me. I think about my childhood.” IN THE beginning there was a bricklayer called Serge, a mother called Renee; two sons, Denis and Frederic, and two daughters, Ludivine and Nadage. Serge played in the back row for Ramonville- Saint-Agne, a village close to Toulouse, and was supported every Sunday by his boys. The younger, Frederic, loved the game and would often race up and down the sideline with a flag, pretending he was a touch judge. Once, during a game, he was hit from close range in the face as a ball was cleared to touch. He was knocked off his feet. The Ramonville faithful remember it as the moment they knew young Michalak was special. He can still see their delighted expressions circling him in a huddle as he struggled to regain consciousness. “Incredible!” they beamed. “You never dropped the flag.” Michalak is a Polish name. His great-grandfather left Poland for the coalmines of northern France; his grandfather continued migrating south and found work as a bricklayer in Toulouse; his father plied the same trade and settled down with Renee. Home was a small apartment near the airport in the working-class suburb of Cite D’Ancely. Frederic wasn’t an easy child, and Renee was soon on first-name terms with the staff of the local casualty unit. “I was forever fighting with my brother and messing around,” he says. “I was in hospital every week having my head stitched, or my ear, or my shoulder . . . the doctors used to think they were hallucinating.” Sport was a good antidote. Aged seven, he joined the
March 22, 200817 yr Author “Scrum-half is a position where you depend entirely on your friends in front,” he explains. “And when things don’t go well, it’s often the scrum-half who carries the can. Against Italy I took a right smack in the face, but I wasn’t going to complain . . . The forwards play a different game than us; exhaustive, formidable, they’re our bricklayers.” A year later, Michalak was a long shot to make the team when the build-up to the World Cup began in 2003. He started the year banished with the under-21s, but got a break against Italy in the Six Nations when Bernard Laporte decided to try him at No 10. The experiment continued against Wales and during the summer tour to New Zealand. The boy was making progress. “We knew he could drive the lorry,” Laporte’s assistant, Bernard Levies, explained. “But we also knew if we gave him the keys too soon, he could take it off the road.” In October, when the team left for Brisbane, he was ready to play. He liked Australia and was feeling good about the tournament. Aussies were definitely his kind of people. The admiration seemed mutual. They warmed to his catwalk looks, his diamond earrings, the huge Maori tattoo on his hip and his habit of carrying his mobile phone in his sock. “Bonjour, mate!” He was a King of Cool. Paired with Poitrenaud for the duration of the tournament, he began making plans to alleviate the boredom; Galthie’s hair was a definite target, and they would search for a zany T-shirt or something to provoke Pelous. A bottle of water in the room became the Webb Ellis Cup; every night they would raise it over their heads and sing a chorus of We Are The Champions. Did he truly believe that France would win? “Well,” he smiles, “I don’t think it’s during a World Cup that a team becomes the best — it happens over time. Look at England: for two years they were unbeaten. But everybody goes there to try.” Michalak began the tournament confidently by kicking 26 points in the opening defeat of Fiji and rewarded himself with a visit to a Brisbane jeweller for some new diamond studs. “They’re fake,” he insists, “they only cost me $20.” Japan, Scotland and the United States were next. He continued to shine. And then, after a brilliant performance in the quarter-final defeat of Ireland, the hype went into overdrive. Paris Match and VSD splashed his life across several glossy pages. He made the front page of L’Equipe — “Michalak Superstar.” Former internationals who should have known better were succumbing to Michalakmania. Franck Mesnel: “At 21 he is already a fine professional and a future great.” Pierre Albaledejo: “I think Michalak can become the greatest No 10 we have ever known.” A week later, opinions were being revised. HE IS STANDING in front of a blackboard in a classroom full of kids in the suburb of Ancely. Exactly a month has passed since his return from the World Cup and he has been invited to address the pupils of his old primary school. The headmaster, Monsieur Cabot, has just introduced him: “Frederic was a bit disruptive at times when he was here, but as you can see, he has done very well since.” Michalak smiles, and glances at the young, innocent faces. He picks out the table where he used to sit and the corner where he used to play marbles, and it feels like yesterday. A microphone has been installed beside the teacher’s desk and the kids have prepared some questions.
March 23, 200817 yr Author “What do you think of your career so far?” “I think I’ve come a long way in a short time,” he grins. “I’ve only been a professional rugby player for three years and have been fortunate enough already to win the French championship and the European championship. And I’ve just come back from a World Cup, which I think you have been following.” “Would you like to be French captain?” “Erm, well, to be a captain of France or a captain of Stade Toulousain you need a lot of experience. You can’t be captain at the age of 20. I’ll need to play a lot longer and continue to work hard. And if one day the coach decides to make me captain, we’ll see. But that’s a long way away.” “How do you feel in the dressing room before games?” “I get a bit stressed because there are a lot of people around and sometimes even the TV cameras. But the more you play, the more you gain in confidence and the stress becomes easier to handle.” “What’s it like to face the haka?” “It’s pretty intimidating. It’s pretty scary. They’re strong boys, the All Blacks. Would you like me to show you?” He grimaces, slaps his thighs and jumps forward with eyes bulging out of his head. The room explodes with laughter. And then the questions start getting interesting. “What was the easiest game of the World Cup?” “Maybe against Scotland. I thought it was going to be a lot harder and was surprised we won so easily.” “What was your favourite game?” “The first one against Fiji . . . anyone remember the score?” “61-18.” “Very good, you are better informed than I am. Yes, Fiji because it was the first game and I was happy to be playing in the World Cup.” “How did it feel when you missed your penalties against England?” He smiles and instinctively tries to make a joke of it: “Are you trying to have a go at me?” But it’s a good question. It is the question. Because if Michalak is ever to reach his full potential, he must find the key to what happened in that game. THE SEMI-FINAL against England, his 17th cap, was a huge test at the age of 21, but he seemed ready to meet the challenge. He went into the game as the leading scorer (101 points) of the tournament, and the statistics were awesome: he had kicked 18 penalties from 22 attempts and 17 conversions from 19 attempts; he had scored two tries and dropped one goal. Was there a surer boot in the tournament? Just one. And on that stormy Sunday evening in November, he was sitting in the opposite dressing room. “Was it the pressure? No, I felt good, but something was different. We weren’t sure of ourselves. There wasn’t the same belief in the team as there was in the other games, and in the game against Ireland. The weather and having to change tactics so quickly made it difficult. Everyone was under pressure, and we went out and played the worst possible game you could imagine.” He hasn’t watched it since. Why waste time in front of the television when he can revisit the crash just by closing his eyes? His first tactical kick, a lofted ball that went straight up and handed possession to England, betrayed him. He had rubbed too much adhesive on his hands and it had screwed up his timing when he tried to release. Four missed penalties followed. In the 64th minute he was called to the bench and replaced by Gerald Merceron. When it was over, he came out with hands held high to the press. “I was useless,” he said. “I didn’t do my job. The wind and the rain are no excuse.” Two months later, his views have softened. “It’s true that I didn’t have a very good game, but the guys around me weren’t great either, and it’s a team sport. We are not alone on the pitch. After, I admitted I played badly, but I haven’t been scarred by the experience. My life hasn’t changed and won’t change. It was just a bad day.” He watched the final in a Sydney hotel. “I was hoping England would win. It meant at least we had been beaten by the world champions, and they deserved it.” And what about Jonny Wilkinson’s winning drop goal? Was this how he had dreamt of winning it for France? “I think it would be a dream for any player to win the World Cup for your team, but as I’ve said, he wasn’t alone on the pitch. He had some exceptional players alongside him and they put him into that position. The No 9 (Matt Dawson) got him 20 metres closer. But he did well. I was happy for him.” He glances at his watch and announces he must go. He’s running late for training and has some laughs to prepare for the boys in the gym. This week he’s off to Paris for the opening game against Ireland in the Six Nations. “Does that excite you?” “Well,” he replies, “I hope I’m selected, for a start, but, yeah, it excites me. It’s the chance to show a better side than I did at the World Cup — or at least in the semi-final.” “And you play England in Paris in the final game?” “Yes,” he smiles, “a good opportunity to cleanse myself of what has gone before.”
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March 24, 200817 yr Author /monthly_03_2008/post-6862-0-1446015465-85716_thumb.jpg" data-fileid="2642516" alt="post-6862-0-1446015465-85716_thumb.jpg" data-ratio="66.91"> /monthly_03_2008/post-6862-0-1446015465-88386_thumb.jpg" data-fileid="2642519" alt="post-6862-0-1446015465-88386_thumb.jpg" data-ratio="150.3"> /monthly_03_2008/post-6862-0-1446015465-90326_thumb.jpg" data-fileid="2642520" alt="post-6862-0-1446015465-90326_thumb.jpg" data-ratio="66.79">
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