The Chamois, the intrepid mascot of France’s oldest Wiesespiel team
Observations & Opinions / Week Two
From Harold Abrahams – Special Correspondent for TSS
Chamonix, France
This correspondent has heard the claims, made many times over the 22 seasons I have been blessed to witness and write about this sport, that I slight the French teams who battle every Saturday in Wiesespiel, preferring the heritage and even the landscapes of Austria and Switzerland. Anyone who has travelled throughout any Alpine region knows they all offer wondrous sites, but I wished this past weekend to honor my Gallic friends and thus attended both the Grenoble and Chamonix matches, reveling in both the stunning French Alps and the solid and compact play of the two winning home sides.
The Gantiers were second best while being thrashed in Week One by a rampant Zurich side, 26-8, but on Saturday, they edged an angry Munich side that was desperate to avoid the 0-2-0 start to which their 20-16 loss consigned them. And while nothing I observed makes me liken this Grenoble team to the powerhouses they fielded in the 1960s, young Gabriel ‘Gabby’ Dubois – 19 years old but looking as if he were 15 – playing a position once called the Reaper (or, in Switzerland, the Cropper), showed spark, skill and want-to. Neither of these teams looks like a winner of the Tyrol League, but the Gantiers may offer serious resistance when playing at home.
Then, leaping into my auto, I arrived in Chamonix with 45 minutes to spare and managed to find some rich pastries, cheese and bread (I was in France, after all) and join some 6,000 supporters of the Chamois as they pushed the Zillertal across the Meadow in a 21-6 romp. Lucas Dupin, whose shoulders are as broad as a hay bale, sent several Red Greens to the sidelines, limping, wincing or dazed.
If some characterize the French as a laissez-faire people, that judgment cannot have come from attending a match at Chamonix. One didn’t need to stare agape at the wonder of Mont Blanc, Europe’s highest mountain, to see the appeal of a match played on a grand Saturday afternoon in this jewel of a village. If I have been remiss in mentioning this sound team and its lovely home, I apologize, Mes amies and amis, and I wish you a season full of Saturdays such as I enjoyed in France’s capital of mountaineering.
The Wheat League typically breeds chaos, and, indeed, two weeks into the 18-match regular season, one team – the afore-lauded Chamois – stands undefeated. Seven teams stand at 1-1-0 and two rest at the bottom of the table with a loss and a draw. After winning their opener with that rarest of scores, 1-0, Imst was reminded that Wiesespiel is a hard game, as the Ebensee Salters licked the Bell Men 27-3. After two weeks, Imst has scored 4 points and yielded 27, a prodigious gap that somehow still leaves them tied for second in the ten-team league. As I said earlier: chaos.
The hard-luck award of the week falls around Chur’s unwilling necks, as the Winemakers followed a 15-15 draw with a 3-point loss. Despite a fine return of 31 points from two matches, Chur awaits their first win of the year as Week Three beckons.