The former opener of the XV of France and the club of La Voulte-sur-Rhône (Ardèche), Guy Camberabero, died at the age of 87, Thursday October 26, at Valence hospital, of heart-related complications. to Covid-19. With his brother Lilian, scrum half, who died in 2015, he formed the hinge of the French team which won the first grand slam of French rugby, in 1968, in what was then the Five Nations Tournament.
They had played together nine times in the French team, scoring all the points in the victory against Australia in 1967 (20-14): four penalties, a conversion and a drop for Guy; a try for Lilian. Guy Camberabero, successor to Pierre Albaladejo, also won the Five Nations Tournament in 1967. He played fourteen matches with the French XV between 1961 and 1968. He gave up the national selection in 1968, tired of the controversies in the press with those who preferred Jean Gachassin, more focused on attack and creativity.
Like Gachassin, of whom he was a friend, Guy Camberabero was a small build (1.69 m, 64 kg) particularly gifted in the kicking game. He also won the only French champion title for La Voulte-sur-Rhône, 5,000 inhabitants, in 1970, against Clermont-Ferrand (3-0). La Voulte is the smallest commune to have won the Brennus Shield. But make no mistake: this club has never been the standard bearer of “village rugby”, despite its size. Rugby was in fact sponsored there by an industrial and chemical behemoth, Rhône-Poulenc Textiles (formerly TASE, formerly CTA). “The 1970 final was the two biggest budgets of the championship at the timea former player told us in 2017. It wasn’t professional, but it was just like it. The club wanted a player? Rhône-Poulenc hired him and found him a position as a foreman, where he didn’t work much so he could train better. »
Family rugby tradition
Born on May 17, 1936, in Saubion, very close to Tyrosse (Landes), Guy Camberabero arrived in 1955, with his brother, in La Voulte-sur-Rhône, who had spotted the gifted young Landes hinge. Met in the Ardèche commune in April 2017, he remembered having done “thirteen hours of non-stop driving”. Hired with Lilian by Rhône-Poulenc Textiles, Guy Camberabero experienced the golden age of La Voulte Sportif (LVS), when the Battandier-Lukowiak stadium − named after two local resistance fighters − welcomed the equivalent of the population of the city as spectators.
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