“It was the best years. It ended badly, we paid the bad things, but Courbis, he made us dream, he’s a great man. His Toulon was the golden age for us “, says Gérard, 40, from Toulon. The golden age of which he speaks is the decade 1983-1993 during which SC Toulon left its mark on Ligue 1. A performance all the more remarkable since the club played every season or almost the maintenance. Nothing that makes Toulon a major club, apart from a few courses in the French Cup, and the revelation David Ginola alongside names like Delio Onnis, Laurent Paganelli or Bernard Casoni. And yet, these ten years have marked French football.
Rugby, a bulky neighbor
The Toulon adventure began in 1983, when Sporting entered Division 1, which it only knew in 1959-60 and 1964-65. Rolland Courbis is one of the strong elements of the team promoted in D1: “I arrived the summer before from Monaco, champion of France. I wanted playing time, and I’ve always been attracted to Toulon “, remembers the one who came “once a month“on the harbor in his youth, at his sister’s godfather. “Here, before the opponents of your championship, you must face the local rugby which is very strong, with extraordinary players and coaches”, explains Courbis, who adds: “In football, your goal in D1 is going to be maintenance, while the neighbor in rugby is aiming for the title”. However, in these 1980s, it was the football that ignited the city.
“We never really did a long course, but we had a grinta. We were the little chicken that upset the big guys, which made them tremble, especially OM. We were their bête noire”
“We never really did a long course, but we had a grinta. We were the little Thumb that made the big ones tremble, especially OM. We were their bete noire “, remember Gérard, nostalgic. For ten years, Toulon managed to maintain itself and even to grab a sixth place in 1984, and a fifth in 1988. Add to that courses in the Coupe de France, in particular an epic semi-final against Monaco in 1984. But not what? enter the legend sportingly. In the absence of titles, it is by its context and its game that SC Toulon marks French football, before finding the anonymity of the second division in 1993, undermined by the case of the black box. Because to offer so many emotions to its public, the club has long lived beyond its means, which has also shaped a certain look at the SCT, seen as a thug club. However, this caricature, Sporting does not owe it to this case of the slush fund.
Toulon the aggressive, the excessive
If Toulon has marked the collective memory, it is because no one left the harbor unscathed. The opposing players, first, were faced with a very rough team, which approached the matches with the knife between the teeth. “We had a certain solidity, an aggressiveness to impress the adversary, to make him trip. There were games that we could win before we even started, by some intimidation in the hallway “, recognizes Rolland Courbis, who became SCT coach in 1986. He continues: “Our strategy was to put things at the point of entry, and to take advantage of the fact that when we make a mistake at the very start of a match, in general, we don’t receive a yellow card. I’m not making you a drawing. We could make certain interventions that we can no longer imagine today “.
“There are games we could win before we even started, by some intimidation in the hallway”
Rough and composed of revengeful players, often southerners, Toulon in the 1980s has everything from the team that we do not want to face. Especially since the men of Courbis are inhabited by a common ambition, reinforced by solid ties. “I wanted a team of friends. For that, it was essential to go on training, to play cards, to go out for drinks, to pay the aperitif in turn “, he explains, marked by an internship at Le Touquet in 1977 with Monaco: “Coach Lucien Leduc closed his eyes so that we could have fun, that we could create relationships. That year, I languished when I woke up to find my friends for coffee and training. And we’re finished champions “. For this, the very young trainer puts in particular on a longer summer preparation, and not only for the physical. Cities with casinos are thus targeted in early summer. “When I say to the players’Anyone who returns before half past midnight has a fine ‘, it only happened once or twice, to mess around. Today it’s fantasized, it seems that every night we had to go out. It’s a little romanticized stuff. Yes, it happened, but on a 12-day course, what happened, twice?”Relativizes Courbis.
A volcanic port
And this kind of anecdote, Toulon de Courbis is full of them, especially when it came to beating the opponent off the field. Badly inflated balloons for warming up, cold water in the showers in winter, heated changing rooms in summer or the classic of the lawn voluntarily not mowed: everything passed. “It’s a bit true and a bit fantasized “, laughs Courbis today, “That there could be 2-3 people who intimidated, insulted, threatened and wicked looks in the corridor: yes it existed. That there could be a warm cloakroom in summer, that we forgot to turn on the heating in winter, yes, it happened but Toulon had not invented it, and we were not the only club to do that. It was local folklore, and it was part of the preparations for the matches”. Like Nîmes, Ajaccio or Bastia, Toulon is then one of the places where it is difficult to win. And this, regardless of the stage.
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Indeed, in its glorious years, SC Toulon sometimes left its den of Bon Rencontre for the temple of Toulon rugby: Mayol. “When we had a team capable of doing better than maintaining ourselves, we would play Mayol. When it was very tight and just to play our maintenance, then it was better to play Bon Rencontre”, says Courbis, who assures that this smaller stadium was “more impressive, intimidating and disturbing for opponents “. But in one as in the other, Sporting could rely on an audience just as hot as its players.
“When we went to Toulon at the beginning, after our comeback in 1984, it was hard. We were ‘well received’, sometimes bombarded with pétanque balls. And in Marseille, they were received too.”
“Toulon is a rebel city in need of recognition “, abstract Benjamin, member of Ultra Fedelissimi of Toulon. Gérard continues: “It’s special, I don’t know how to explain it, you have to live it. We are a coastal city, but working class “. And like many working-class cities, there is a very warm public. “There is the rugby enthusiast, the football enthusiast, but also the passionate of both: the Toulonnais likes to see his city perform, and that is understood “, sums up Courbis. Gérard faithful for thirty years, Gérard continues: “In the stands as on the lawn, it was hot. Between the players and us, there was a sacred union. The Toulon public is special “. Benjamin punctuates: “We never give up on anything here, never “.
This volcanic atmosphere reaches new heights during matches against the big names of the time (Monaco, Bordeaux), but especially against Marseille, during glowing derbies. “It was magic, one of the strongest rivalries in France “, assures Gérard. “When we went to Toulon at the beginning, after our recovery in 1984, it was hard”, recognizes a founding member of Commando Ultra in Marseille. He pursues : “The geographic proximity, their rough team with big mouths, and the growth of the Ultra movement in Marseille have made them confrontations colorful, passionate and in tension. We were ‘well received’, sometimes bombarded with pétanque balls. And in Marseille, they were received too “. In a Côte d’Azur remake of the Toulon David against the Goliath Marseillais, the derbies ignite the shores of the Mediterranean, until OM de Tapie does not take off when the Toulon de Courbis sinks in the early 1990s.
What about football?
Often summarized in its rough team and its boiling context, the SC Toulon of the 1980s was also an innovative team, under the orders of Rolland Courbis. Aggressive pressing, very high sides, wingers in false feet or zone marking: the scorpion fishes have appeared as pioneers in various fields. “We were ahead of a lot of things, and the players often tell me about it. It is not pretension, it is the truth and I am very proud of it. I also met great coaches of the time to inspire me, like Lippi or Goethals, to steal things from them “, says the coach, very proud to see several of his former players have become coaches in their turn.
These innovations in the game were carried by others, and today the heritage of Toulon remains more marked by its folklore than by its game. “With almost the smallest budget in the championship, we managed to keep going for ten years “, savor Courbis. The budget is precisely what will sink the Rade club, when a black box will be set up to be able to attract renowned players like Casoni, Pardo and Olmeta. Relegated administratively to the second division in 1993 following this affair, Toulon files for bankruptcy in 1998. Twenty-two years later, Sporting is preparing to start the season in the fourth division, without ever having regained its luster of yesteryear. “I live in a nostalgia that I haven’t even known. When I see the archives of Toulon-Monaco, Toulon-Bordeaux, Toulon-Marseille: I tell myself that this is science fiction “, laments Benjamin. That’s great, science fiction, Mourad Boudjellal, the new president of the SCT, knows her well as a former comic book publisher.
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