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Midfield steel Giordani - Soccer's loss is rugby's gain
Posted: Wednesday March 17, 1999 05:07 PM
CLAIREFONTAINE, France (Reuters) -- Pascal Giordani carries the weight of France's defensive expectations when he is thrown in at the deep end for his first cap against England at Twickenham in the Five Nations championship on Saturday. But the Dax center, a keen schoolboy soccer player, might never have been playing rugby at all. "My objective this season was a place in the France A team," he aid. "I don't know how I'm going to react against the English. "I hope it's going to be like a big [domestic] championship match and that things will go okay," he said after being named as one of five changes to the French team upset 34-33 by Wales at the Stade de France two weeks ago. Giordani is in for injured center Richard Dourthe, his former Dax teammate before Dourthe moved on to Stade Francais this season. Dourthe saw barely four minutes of action against Wales before having to come off injured, leaving France's defensive plans in confusion. Giordani is expected to add some of the midfield steel that was so sorely missed once Dourthe went off. France team manager Jo Maso said the selectors were confident that Giordani's defensive strengths would help him to settle down quickly in the match. "But he must also know he can count on the support of all his team mates and the reassuring presence of [fullback] Emile Ntamack behind him," Maso said. "Against the Welsh, the failure was that of the defense collectively and not that of one of two players taken individually," Giordani said. A good performance by the 24-year-old part-time physical education teacher's could open the way for a World Cup place -- all a long way from the youth, when he stumbled into rugby at Trignac quite by chance. Giordani played soccer as a boy in Belfort, the town of his birth in eastern France. But when he moved with his mother to the southwest, the club at Trignac in the Bordeaux region would not license him. A rugby-mad neighbor suggested he try changing sport. "I must have been about 10 and I liked it straight away," said Giordani, who went on to join Dax in 1993. "I began watching matches on TV but I didn't imagine that one day I'd play for France." He could also hardly have imagined a bigger baptism of fire than a Five Nations clash with England at Twickenham.
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