The Cult: Sebastien Chabal

On a group road trip to France as a student, replete with atrocious accents and a vague air of sexual frustration, we stopped at the enormous Carrefour outside Calais to pick up an uncouth quantity of wine. Walking the aisles, perusing the various vintages with the air of someone who knew vaguely what he was doing, one particular bottle of Bordeaux caught my attention from the corner of my unselective eye. Positioned in unassuming fashion, seemingly untouched by other customers, the bottle was emblazoned with the features of a man who seemed unduly familiar to me. On closer inspection, the wild hair, the shaggy beard and the fierce expression turned out to be those of Sebastien Chabal.

While this was quite surreal in many ways, it also struck me as somehow fitting. An icon of French rugby union, Chabal was always a strange blend of rugged savagery and understated sophistication; the sort of grizzled forward who one could also imagine owning a vineyard in some sultry southern department of France. On the pitch, deployed across the back row, he was a player of gargantuan size and formidable strength who could easily be used as a human battering ram, even if he was also capable of refined forward play and serving a rather more cultured role. On the front of a bottle of wine, he was somehow still frightening, even if his pose was meant to be evocative of ripe tannins as opposed to the feeling of being bulldozed by almost 18 stone's worth of Gallic brawn.

With his close resemblance to our neolithic forefathers, Chabal was one of the most recognisable players in world rugby for the duration of the mid-to-late noughties. The fact that he had a whole plethora of nicknames, 'Attila', 'Caveman' and 'Rasputin' being perhaps the most popular, was indicative of his cult following amongst French fans and the way he captured the imagination of those in the stands. His wildman look made him into a masculine archetype within the sport, a representative of the most physical and intimidating aspects of rugby. The British press would often characterise him as a prehistoric throwback, a thawed-out neanderthal, which although befitting of his public image rather obscured the character of the man.

While Chabal was doubtlessly one of the scariest players going during his time at the top of his game, his barbarian aesthetic and caveman reputation also left him somewhat vulnerable to criticism. Whether or not he took any notice, the fact that he was both iconic and conspicuous saw him loaded with blame when things were not going well for Les Bleus. Indeed, his legacy with the national team took something of a battering after his France career came to an end, with the censure connected in no small part to a general decline in the fortunes of French rugby. There was also the fact that, as one of the most distinctive faces in the sport, he was a marketer's dream and drew high wages accordingly. For some, that made him intrinsically overrated. Now, with the passing of time, we are in a position to reassess the bearded monster who mustered the French scrum for all those years.

Though Chabal was petrifying and powerful, and endowed with some subtler abilities too, he was far from perfect as a player and certainly had his limitations. He lacked pace, he was never the fittest, and he didn't have the flair and dynamism to change the outcome of a match alone. That said, there were some who suggested after his retirement that his legend was based on little more than a matted mane and some untamed facial hair. This was an excessively harsh judgement, and ignored much of his contribution to the French team.

In 2011, when Chabal was last selected to represent the national side, Les Bleus were at the peak of their powers. They had won the 2010 Six Nations, finished second only to England the following year, and would go on to reach the final of the World Cup, losing to hosts New Zealand by a single point. There was a feeling amongst columnists and commentators that the national team had left him behind somewhat, which should not have been a total surprise considering his advancing age. There was soon a dramatic turnaround in results, however, with France picking up the wooden spoon in the 2013 edition of the Six Nations. The fans and press turned on the side, and Chabal was seemingly damned by association in a widespread outburst of contempt for the French team.

In hindsight, then, Chabal was dismissed as a superficial star with little substance, a one-trick pony whose limitations were emblematic of the struggling side he had left behind. For the commentariat on both sides of the Channel, the transformation of Les Bleus from enigmatic winners to mercurial losers was too much to handle, and so the pitchforks came out for their talismans, and memories of Chabal were broken on the wheel. In the manner of the French Revolution, the idols and emblems of the old order were symbolically torn down, with Chabal and his hirsute cheeks more emblematic than anyone else. Much like the French Revolution, it probably went a bit far in the end. Caught up in the narrative of the rise and fall of French rugby, it feels as if Chabal's treatment has been revisionist at times and a touch unjust.

Writing soon after he announced his decision to retire from the sport in 2014, French newspaper Midi-Olympique claimed that Chabal would be remembered for "a look, some nicknames, some adverts and a little bit of rugby." In immediate riposte, it should be noted that Chabal won the Six Nations with France in 2007, helping the side to the semi-finals of the World Cup not long afterwards. In his club career, he won the English Premiership with Sale Sharks, winning hearts and minds in Manchester during a successful five-year stint on these shores. He was more than just a caveman gimmick, even if his fierce look was a fundamental part of his appeal.

More than that, in unmistakable fashion, he did much for the popularity of the French game. During his heyday, the media would talk of Chabalmania, with his name often greeted with the loudest cheers when the team took to the field at the Stade de France. He was given another nickname, the 'Anaesthetist', on account of his penchant for sleep-inducing tackles, while fans often wore t-shirts bearing the slogan: 'Cha-bad to the bone'. He was a phenomenon and, whatever might be said of his flaws and imperfections, the fact that he served as the inspiration for placards, songs and mass fancy dress suggested he was doing something right. While Pascal Papé, Julien Bonnaire and Imanol Harinordoquy might have been technically superior forwards, Chabal was the one who roused the crowd to sing his name.

His fan-favourite status was sealed by his behaviour off the pitch, which belied his prehistoric billing. Cast in a similar mould to Eric Cantona, Chabal gave the impression of having an inscrutable intellect as well as a strange and esoteric sense of humour. He was notoriously taciturn with the press, seemingly on a point of principle, yet still managed to exude charisma while cloaked in the veil of his public persona. So, when asked about his popularity amongst the supporters during an interview with The Telegraph in 2007, he gave the nonchalant response: "So they chant my name. So what? Let's not talk about it." In an interview with Rugby Dump a few years later, he was asked which opponent had hit him with the hardest tackle. "No one I can remember," came the laconic reply.

During his time with Sale, Chabal gave some philosophical musings on Englishness to The Guardian. "Why do English people like cricket?" he asked rugby correspondent Robert Kitson. "The only reason for going seems to be to have a few beers? Surely it would be simpler to go to the pub." He was openly dismissive of English cuisine and British weather, and managed to stay incredibly Gallic even when living in the north-west's heartlands. This seemed to endear him even further to the French public, while his cultural preferences were received with good humour in Manchester, too.

To top it all off, Chabal famously elected to drive a little red smart car to and from the training ground, with the sight of his giant frame hunched over the wheel seemingly premeditated in its comic value. It was touches like these that made him so well liked, no matter what his detractors said of his skills. While he was a force to be reckoned with on the pitch, he had all the hallmarks of a cult hero off it. He might not have been the greatest player of his generation, but he was the only one who could look like a savage, tackle like a beast and come across as a gruff sophisticate all the while.

Growing up in Beauvallon, a small village just outside the southeastern commune of Valence, Chabal was raised in a rural environment a stone's throw away from the fertile banks of the Rhone. That might well explain his affinity with vineyards, as well as his lifestyle once he found fame with the national team. When Chabal first burst onto the scene, he was a clean-shaven youth who few would have compared to a caveman or neanderthal. He had a reputation as a drinker and a party animal, however, which earned him a fair few tellings off from those who coached him through his early years.

Coming from a secluded part of the country, it's possible that Chabal found it hard to acclimatise to the lifestyle of a professional rugby player, and so struggled to find the balance between preserving his fitness and indulging his newfound freedoms. It is also possible that, as a shy young man, he compensated for his bashfulness by slamming the booze. Nonetheless, spurred on by his coaches, he gradually started to tone things down as his career blossomed. While playing for his first professional club, Bourgoin, he met his future wife Annick and so decided to settle down for good. It was she who, after the birth of their first child, encouraged him to maintain his beard, and so his barbarian image was born just as he became a civilised man.

As much as there was to appreciate in the finer points of Chabal's personality, it should not be forgotten that he could still be absolutely fucking terrifying. Particularly in his interactions with the media, he often presented a face of glowering rage. That was never truer than in a famous press conference ahead of the 2007 World Cup, when France's hulking talisman gave short shrift to a journalist hoping to ask him a few questions in English. The look in his eyes as he gave a terse response in the negative was no doubt enough loosen the bowels.

That said, as with anyone who plays up to their public persona, there was something in Chabal's attitude which suggested he recognised his own vulnerability. In acting the caveman, he was giving the press what they wanted as opposed to any actual insight into himself. In that sense, it was convenient for him to be a barbarian, with his aesthetic as much a form of protection as a marketing exercise or tool of intimidation. Perhaps that was the true reason he left his beard and his hair unshorn, even if his wife was a fan of the bushy and uncultivated facade.

"When I think that people imagine that Seb deliberately set out to look like Attila the Hun, it makes me smile. No one is more sensitive and withdrawn than him."

– Chabal's wife Annick, speaking to Paris-Match about her husband.