After a chorus of criticism, the organisers of the men’s Rugby World Cup in France have bowed to pressure and promised to re-record the pre-match national anthems which they said fans found “disturbing”.
A project involving 7,000 schoolchildren from diverse backgrounds, La Mêlée des Chœurs, has seen choirs singing each country’s anthem without accompanying music, but the response from inside the stadiums was overwhelmingly negative.
Problems surfaced at the opening match in Paris on Friday, when France took on New Zealand. La Marseillaise was mangled as the home nation’s players appeared to be badly out of sync and out of tune with the schoolchildren singing along in canon. The problems deepened over the seven further matches of the opening weekend, including a “butchering” of God Save the King before England played Argentina.
On Tuesday tournament organisers announced a hasty volte-face, promising new, simplified versions. Rather than jettisoning the pre-records entirely, they would still be sung by children, and added that they would be subject to approval from each of the 20 competing nations.
On Wednesday, the France 2023 chairman, Jacques Rivoal, said: “The feedback we got after eight games were that these anthems were disturbing, or surprising to our fans. We are here to prioritise the fan experience, and we were quite concerned by this negative feedback … it is quite a sensitive question because for all the teams it’s a very important point.
“Today we have proposed new versions, simplified versions, while preserving the children’s voices, and these different versions will not … be disturbing for the supporters, and will offer a more affirmative musical performance.
The tournament director, Michel Poussau, said the competing nations would be consulted over the new versions. “We understand it didn’t work, or it hasn’t worked as well as we hoped,” he admitted. “We can have anthems which will be closer to expectations, but will still have that touch from these kids, who I want to say have been amazing, have been working very hard, and who deserve to be part of this tournament. That is what we have been working [on] and hopefully the new version will be approved by all unions.”
Brian O’Driscoll, the former Ireland and British & Irish Lions captain, was among those who had criticised the singing, telling the Off the Ball podcast: “The anthems have been terrible, haven’t they? The two big anthems, if we’re honest, are La Marseillaise and the Italian anthem. Both of them feel as though they’ve been butchered.”
The soprano Lesley Garrett told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday the organisers had “misunderstood the vital relationship between the anthems, the players and the fans”.
“A lot of the choirs are pre-recorded and I think the whole essence of the relationship between singing and sport is the fact that it’s all live and everyone is doing it together and it’s binding the people who are going to be playing and watching.”
As well as the anthem problems, organisers vowed to tackle problems for fans entering the stadiums. There were chaotic scenes outside the Stade Vélodrome in Marseille before England’s match against Argentina on Saturday night. Thousands of ticket holders missed the start of the Pool D opener because of the limited number of entry points and turnstiles, insufficient staffing levels and extensive security checks. There were similar issues before Ireland’s match against Romania in Bordeaux the same day.
“It is very clear that not everything went well in the first weekend and that is not really a surprise to us. It’s always very complex to start,” said Poussau.
There were also issues meeting the supporters’ demands for refreshments. “We have had a heatwave in September, which has never happened before,” said the France 2023 chief executive, Julien Collette. “The fans drank a lot more.
“We thought we had sufficient supplies based on previous records, but those records were broken. For example, the previous record was 50,000 cups [of beer], and there we sold 90,000, well over any previous records. The second consequence is that the barrels have been difficult to keep refrigerated. It was not so much the supplies, but how cold the barrels were, which is why there were queues.”
