Ice hockey: in Nîmes, things are still a little slippery…

The absence for nine matches of captain and top scorer Jordan Agliardi, injured in both shoulders, will have greatly penalized the Nîmes club. – STEPHANIE GOUIRAN

For the second year in a row, Nîmes HC missed qualifying for the Division 3 play-offs. A relative failure for a club which is struggling to democratize its sport in the town.

In 2022-2023, Nîmes HC missed qualifying for the Division 3 play-offs (4th federal level) by one point in the standings. This season, the Nîmes, who have only won five matches, saw the door to the top 6 slammed on their fingers by… two goals. Seventh, they finished tied on points with Villard-de-Lans but were beaten in the particular goal-average.

Never in full

''We never played all the matches in full, regrets Gard coach Raphaël Facchini. The match in Besançon (6-2 defeat, November 18, 2023) was a turning point. Scorer Agliardi was injured and found himself out during the match. nbsp;nine matches. With the foreigners Sabourin, regularly in Canada for professional reasons, and Constantineau, referee in Magnus (D1), often absent, that was a lot.''

A question of sports policy

It ended up being too much. ''Each time, we arrive at the foot of the play-offs but I don't see a team succeeding without paid foreigners, that's over in Division 3, recalls Facchini . We don't pay them. Afterwards, it’s a question of sports policy. Either you put everything on team 1 and you forget the training; either you balance it out by saying that team 1 is the showcase and you take care of a study sport to develop hockey in Nîmes.''

Precisely, can this sport find a place in the sun… in the southern sun ? Facchini explains the problem: ''The strongest teams are in the Alps because that’s where there is the most hockey. We are trying to sell a project to players without having the means. And even if you have the sun, that's not everything. We are reaching the limit of what we can do because we do not have the ice rink we need (300 seats), with revenue and ticketing, to imagine being in D2 .''

''We don't see the communities at the match. For partners, this is not a good place for business…''

However, in 2018, in its second year of existence, Nîmes reached the play-offs. But it didn't last long: ''I went to see the sports assistant at the time, Julien Plantier, who made me understand that we were doing a very good job but that we should not expect to have more money. When we tell you that… We therefore have to find solutions with our partners, we have around sixty of them. But they all tell me the same thing: "We give you money, we come to watch hockey because it’s really nice but we are missing something essential to inject more: we doesn't see the communities at the match, it's not a good place to talk business. When we put money into handball or rugby, we don't go there for the sport but to talk business. At your place, we come here for sport, not for business.'''' Everything is said…
 

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