The WhatsApp profile picture of Imanol Harinordoquy is a mugshot of Darth Vader and, as I find out towards the end of our rendezvous in a Parisian café, his ringtone is The Imperial March.
Harinordoquy, dressed almost all in black, is also a dead ringer for the Sith Lord (without the mask, somewhat ironically given one of the most iconic images of the Frenchman’s career is him wearing one). The 44-year-old takes pleasure in playing up to a caricature of villainy and, over the course of 12 years and 82 caps on the French back row, controversy and notoriety were never far from Harinordoquy’s door.
Whether that was his father, watching his son play for Biarritz, leaping from the stands to punch a Bayonne player in the Basque derby; the Zorro-esque mask worn in the 2010 Heineken Cup semi-final and final; or when, in 2003, ahead of his first trip to Twickenham to face England, Harinordoquy revealed that he was not too fond of the English. There is a chance that this interview could be hard work…
But, as becomes clear over the course of an hour, on the inside Harinordoquy is no Darth Vader at all, paying little heed to the dark side of the Force. This Basque beacon, all 6ft 4in of him, made his name as one of the most dashing, daring, and destructive back-rowers in France’s history, but he welcomes me in Paris, where he is attending France’s opener against Wales, with all the warmth and bonhomie which is customary for French rugby – even if he harbours no regrets for saying he disliked us rosbifs over the Channel.
“I didn’t say I despised the English!” he says. “I said I didn’t like them. It’s not the same! ‘Despising’ is different. It’s funny because it was right at the start, I was 21 and it was my first press conference. I wasn’t used to them, nor the media landscape in general. A world I didn’t know. Playing England at age-group level, there were always loads of fights, a big rivalry with these generations. So I didn’t like the English very much because of that. Their attitude after the game was sometimes not great and there were a few times when the post-match reception did not go too well. I never had a beer with them in the changing rooms after the game, for example. But we did with other teams. Not even with the senior international team, actually. Never.
“So, in the press conference, I said I didn’t like the English, quite bluntly. I said it calmly but the next day it was the headline literally everywhere… it was a media game, so they kept it going. I played along.”
“No [I don’t regret it], it was funny,” he adds. “Because there was never any animosity. I’ve never fought an Englishman on the pitch, never behaved poorly. It was more done to spice things up.”
Harinordoquy, the winner of two Top 14 titles with Biarritz, five Six Nations championships and three Grand Slams, cites Martin Johnson, England’s World Cup-winning captain as the hardest player he ever faced, with the 2003 semi-final loss to England – alongside 2007 – as “awful; the worst memories of [his] career”.
The Bayonne-born Basque-speaker was part of a fearsome back row himself – with Serge Betsen and Olivier Magne at the 2003 World Cup – and knows a thing or two about the exploits of numbers six to eight on a rugby field. To that end, there is another Englishman whom he holds in particularly high regard.
“When [Martin] Johnson wasn’t there, it wasn’t the same England team,” he says. “He was the boss. So strong, with an incredible aura. Jonny Wilkinson, too, was monstrous. And Lawrence Dallaglio, my opposite number, a beast – and I was young and he was towards the end. With the rivalry, it was always a real tough battle up front.
“Twickenham is one of the greatest stadiums – except when I was playing, as we found it totally impenetrable. It’s very impressive – a fortress.
“When I was playing, if there was one team I never wanted to lose to, when you looked at the fixtures at the start of the season, it was always the English.
“They caused me a lot of misery. The 2003 World Cup, when I was a young player, I had a dream and they dashed it. It was great weather for every game that tournament and then it rained against England. We couldn’t play. Wilkinson, three points. It was awful. The same in 2007.
“The Grand Slam in 2004 and 2010, we played the English the last match in Paris. They did everything to beat us. They had nothing to win. Against us, even if they haven’t had a great championship, they always raise their game.”
Harinordoquy, now the owner of the Contrebandiers wine bar in his beloved Biarritz, is feted for his performances in blue but, as a runner-up in two European finals and a double winner of the French domestic title, he was just as renowned in red, green and white. The Basque derby, with less than 10 kilometres separating Biarritz’s stadium from neighbouring Bayonne, is renowned for its ferocity and parochialism. In 2021, Harinordoquy was in tears at the Parc des Sports Aguiléra as Biarritz defeated Bayonne in the promotion play-off; but 10 years earlier, in the same fixture, Harinordoquy’s father, Lucien, made the headlines, running on to the pitch to intervene in some handbags which involved his son.
“It happened in slightly strange circumstances,” Harinordoquy says. “At that time, we played midweek, too, and my dad was working a lot, under a lot of stress. He had travelled 1,000 kilometres in the day and we had just learnt that my mother was ill. It excuses nothing but I had told him not to come to the match. He never usually watched the derby between Biarritz and Bayonne because it’s too tense. I told him not to come but he came anyway. I was holding on to two Bayonne players. There were no punches thrown. They were holding me to the ground, for a long time, but it was not violent. That happened just in front of where my dad was in the stand. He lost it.
“He jumped over the end of the stand, five metres in height – crazy – he landed in the playing area. Thankfully players recognised him. Otherwise he could have got hurt. There were some big boys in that Bayonne team and Dad was lucky because if they had punched him… they might have killed him. It was far more dangerous for him than for us! It was a happy ending because he apologised and he was sending gifts to the Bayonne players. Lots of funny drawings and cartoons in the newspapers. We all had a laugh, although not him so much. He can say that he played in the derby!”
Amazingly, that is not Harinordoquy’s most notable Biarritz appearance. That came a year earlier, ahead of a European Cup semi-final against Munster where a broken nose left his availability for the match dangling by a thread.
“I had an operation,” he says, “but a week later we had the semi-final against Munster in San Sebastián and it was very important because we needed to win the European Cup to qualify for the following year’s tournament.
“Toulouse had already qualified for Europe because of their standing in the Top 14, but we were only 12th or 13th so we were never going to qualify. So, if we played Toulouse in the final and beat them then we would have had European rugby, and there were certain players whose future at the club depended on that. So, it was a massive game and I did everything I could to play in it.
“I spoke to the medical team and the surgeon and I asked him what the risks were if I played. I told him I was going to play on Monday and I went to see a specialist who made me a mask out of PVC in which I could see perfectly. I trained fully that week. It was supporting my cheekbones. It was perfect.
“But, at the time, this mask was not permitted in the regulations. You could not wear anything which might injure an opponent. Munster knew that I was planning to play with protection, so they made the referee stop by our hotel the day before the match and he asked to see the mask at 9pm. I showed it to him and he said that he could not let me play with it. He said he’d check what I was wearing before kick-off tomorrow.
“So, at 10pm, the night before the match, we were trying to make a new mask made out of foam with what we had at the hotel. But I’d never trained with it. The first time I wore it was in the warm-up and I couldn’t see anything. It was like a gladiator’s mask; very deep and narrow. I could only see directly in front of me. I had to strain my neck up to see up and down to see down.
“I also broke two ribs in the match – there was also that. I played with two broken ribs. The following week [in the final], too.”
Harinordoquy, the embodiment of warrior spirit; a gladiator who, in fact, might have felt right at home a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.
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