An Australian has priceless inside information on how France will play against the Wallabies in the first of three Tests at Brisbane on Wednesday … but is duty bound to stay tight lipped.
That Australian is James Kent who has been right in the thick of France’s preparations for Wednesday’s Test series opener as one of their three-member Performance Analysis team.
Get your tickets now for the Wallabies three-Test series with France!
“Insider’s knowledge,” I suppose,” says Kent, laughing, early this week after returning with the French squad to their Sydney base at Baulkham Hills after training at North Sydney Oval.
Kent, 33, admits to still feeling torn by his loyalties when Australia plays France. With his father, David, being Australian and mother, Christine, French, Kent has dual nationality
However, don’t expect that to distract him on Wednesday, or for the rest of the series. It has not done so since he was called up “six or seven weeks ago” by the Fédération Francaise de Rugby for whom he had worked with their Under20s squad to join their senior squad.
And forget any notion that he Kent will be distracted when the two national anthems are played at Suncorp Stadium. Kent will sing ‘La Marseillaise’ with the trademark gusto and passion of any Frenchman, and remain mute during the singing of ‘Advance Australia Fair’.
“Growing up, they were teams I followed passionately,” he says. “When they played one another I would sing both, but I never enjoyed it as much. We’d have mixed emotions. As a kid, you learn all the big anthems from watching the games. Wednesday, I’ll have to sing the French one and keep my mouth shut for the Australian one. I’ll have to have my best poker face.”
Kent’s pathway in rugby has seen him travel from England, to Spain, the United States, Canada, Luxembourg and France. It also showcases the diverse career opportunities that exist in the game at an international level for any Australians who are keen to pursue them.
Born in London, Kent was schooled in England as a border at Radley College from 2001 to 2006. He then took a gap year, returning to Australia to work in the bush at Coonamble in central-west NSW. He then returned to Europe to play rugby in Spain with the Madrid Barbarians RFC where an ACL injury put his playing career as a back on hold and steered him to coaching. While coaching at Madrid, he also earned a BA in International Tourism at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos. He then studied Business Management from 2010 to 2011 at a satellite station in Madrid with Staffordshire University and again in 2019 to where he is now close to finishing a Masters in Sports coaching today.
Meantime, Kent’s career in rugby unravelled as he backed his gut feeling and ambition to follow the trail of opportunities that fell before him. It began in Spain during the global financial crisis when unemployment for 18 to 35-year-olds there, he says, rocketed to 40 per cent. This prompted him to move to the US and work for a start-up company in New York.
However, after six months in the ‘Big Apple,’ the rugby bug got the better of Kent when he took up an opportunity with USA Rugby to work as a liaison officer for the inaugural Women’s 7s tournament in Texas in 2013. His dual language assets – he learned English and French simultaneously from child hood through his parents’ respective native tongue – saw him assigned to the Canadian team. During that tournament, Kent met Rugby Canada’s High Performance manager and former Crusaders player Steve Lancaster from New Zealand and let him know that if there were any opportunities ahead, that he would be very interested.
“When I was there I realized that sitting behind my desk in a cubicle in Manhattan wasn't going to be doing it for me, “says Kent. “I realized how much I missed the sporting world.”
Kent then returned to Madrid and in time became the Spanish club’s head coach. Then one day he heard back from Lancaster. He was told of an opportunity, one that was: “a bit of everything ... You'll be with different teams, from the U20s to the 7s, helping them with the logistics and whatever they need. So, I went over there and that its, everything rolled on.”
It certainly did…Kent worked with the Canadian women’s XVs squad as an analyst and skills coach for the 2014 Women’s World Cup in France where Canada lost the final against England, and again in 2016 for their Men’s XVs in the America’s Rugby Championship, and their women’s XVs on their 2016 tour to the United Kingdom, playing England at Twickenham and Ireland and New Zealand in Dublin; and again, for the 2017 Women’s World Cup in Ireland.
Soon after the 2017 Women’s World Cup though, Kent and his wife, Hilda, a lawyer who he met in Madrid, moved to Luxembourg after she accepted a position in the financial sector there. This saw Kent throw his energy into Luxembourg rugby, first as an assistant-and-then head coach of the Rugby Club Luxembourg and then with the Luxembourg national team. In a mostly amateur set-up, it was a significant period of Kent’s career, on and off the paddock.
As his teams enjoyed much success, so did Kent in the important arena of networking with his eyes on opportunity in a professional rugby environment. In his first week at Luxembourg, Kent “cold emailed” Kobus Potgieter who was the South African coach of the Heidelberger Ruderklub, Germany’s oldest rugby club in Heidelberg that was then owned by Dr Hans-Peter Wild. Potgieter, who was also coaching the German national team from 2013-2017, had also played a major role in developing rugby union in Germany, something Dr Wild was passionate about. Potgieter replied to Kent and invited him for a ‘meet and greet.’
Kent did not hesitate and set off for the two-and-a-half-hour drive from Luxembourg to Heidelberg where Potgieter showed Kent around the club’s facilities and provided him with a sense of how a professional club operates. Their one-off meeting paid significant dividends after 2017 when Dr Wild took over the French Top 14 club, Stade Francais in Paris when he relinquished ownership of the Heidelberg club due to conflicting interests.
READ MORE:
INSIDE KNOWLEDGE: Philip giving French tips
EASY CHOICE: Rennie backs Lolesio
TEAM: Wallabies name first Test squad
In 2019, Dr Wild signed Potgieter to Stade Francais as their youth squad coach. In turn, Kent’s connect with Potgieter led to his recruitment at Stade Francis as academy coach and performance analyst. The initial offer was not full-time. It didn’t even pay. But Kent saw an open door. Kent recalls Potgieter saying: “‘There might be an opportunity in the academy for you. We can’t offer you anything at the moment.’ I thought of going there, basically for free as well, working with the academy and doing analysis, but also again, working with skills - some ‘catch-pass and ‘hand-eye coordination’ stuff … micro skills. Then there was work!”
Kent was now among the milieu of professional French rugby. Even better, he says: “I ended up working with a guy [at Stade Francais] who was mostly working in the French Federation and told me there's an opportunity to apply for with the French Under 20s.”
Kent again seized the opportunity. In January, 2020, the FFR signed him to work with their Under 20s squad. And here is now, back in Australia, but with the French senior team, planning and plotting to beat Australia. Where will his rugby journey take Kent who still lives in Luxembourg? Who knows? He doesn’t. “The way things have gone for me the last few years, I don’t look too far ahead because I know things can change very quickly,” he says. “Sport is unpredictable. I think it's about focusing on this tour and seeing how that goes.”
As for this Test series, Kent says despite COVID-19 requiring he and the French team to follow strict isolation protocols that have so far allowed them to only leave their Baulkham Hills base for training, the mood among the French squad is brimming with excitement.
“Lockdown works both ways, because it also brings a lot of guys together, especially with new players and new staff – myself included,” says Kent. “Every time they come into camp there is a buzz – and I have seen it with the 20s – because they know where they are. It is a big difference to being with your club day-in, day-out, especially in the Top 14 where it is a very long season. But as soon as they come to a different place, they re-energise quickly.
It has been well documented how the French squad is absent of some experienced key players. But Kent joins the chorus of praise for the depth of talent in French rugby that has three professional leagues with the Top 14, Rugby Pro D2 and Fédérale 1 leagues. “There's a lot of young talent. The strength of French rugby is their depth,” Kent says, adding that the French players know all too well that this Australia-France series will provide them with potentially career changing opportunity to “make their own mark for the next few years.”
And he expects every player in the French jersey to seize the opportunity … as he has done.
