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PARIS - Rugby, a sport whose base in France lies in the country's southwest, is girding for a nationwide push on the back of this year's World Cup.
From Nice in the south to Lille in the north and from Brittany in the west to Strasbourg in the south, no effort is being spared to promote "l'ovalie" - the oval art - in a nation dominated by soccer.
Even though the first kick in the 2007 World Cup won't be made until September 7, newspapers, TV and book publishers are hard at work. The daily Le Parisien is running a helpful weekly column to explain a scrum, a maul, a ruck and other fundamentals to rugby neophytes.
Last week, it used a picture of an underpants-clad Dan Carter to attract female readers. "What do you say to doing a little haka with him?" it drooled.
A flurry of pre-World Cup rugby books is starting to emerge, including a special World Cup edition of Rugby pour les Nuls (Rugby for Dummies), while the first official World Cup boutique has opened in central Paris, selling replica shirts and other paraphernalia from the 20 national teams in the tournament.
About half of its customers are foreign tourists and the other half are French, the shop says (top-selling items: the Bleus' new navy-blue, tight-fit shirt, followed by the All Blacks jersey).
A 300sq m megastore is set to open in Marseille and a third may be opened on the Champs-Elysees in the capital.
Its a good time for French rugby to make the push. Outside the southwest and Paris, rugby is either a minority sport or not played at all. But that uneven picture may change, with a mixture of national success and an influx of resources and enthusiasm at the grass roots.
Last month, les Bleus won the Six Nations. Soccer, meanwhile, is in the doldrums after the national team's unexpected run of success in last year's World Cup.
Rugby is also being seen as a means of addressing one of France's biggest social problems - the poor integration of young French people from Arab and African descent.
The virtues of strength, self-restraint and team spirit are being harnessed by France Rugbycite, an association that teaches rugby to teenagers in the grim, crime-ridden, suburban housing estates.
"We take them between the ages of 15 and 17, when it's pretty much their last chance before a scrape with the law ends up with a jail term," says the association's Vincent Lelano. "We want them to love the sport as we do, but it's not with the idea of making them great players but to help them to integrate."
Their work was showcased in a TV documentary last week. The lads and their coaches trained, played and socialised together, and the state-run railway SNCF did its bit by offering them slots on its work experience programme to boost their chances of finding a job.
After the team, overcoming many hurdles, had got to a decent level, the association organised matches against teams from Morocco and Belgium in an unofficial tri-nations tournament. The pride that these teenagers clearly felt in pulling on the blue jersey was telling: they represented France.
