Union Sportive Bellegarde Coupy 2022/23 Home Shirt

French rugby lives two lives, the televised one and the village one, and this shirt comes from the second. Union Sportive Bellegarde-Coupy play in Valserhône, a commune in the Ain department created in 2019 from the merger of Bellegarde-sur-Valserine with its neighbours, halfway between the Jura and Geneva. Model Concept dressed them in broad old-style green and white hoops, number 15 on the back and a chest full of local sponsors, the café, the garage, the canton's firm, which is how Sunday rugby has been financed in France for a century. A territorial league match worn shirt, no replicas, no online store: to own one, you have to get it out of a dressing room. That was the case.

Here at Hoopster the rugby of French small towns has a reserved seat: old style hoops, the café and the garage on the chest and a 15 sweated through a territorial championship. Sunday France has funded itself this way for a century, and long may it.