The meeting scheduled for Saturday against Palente-Besançon will have a special taste for the Rennes handball players. Because in addition to being the first game of the season, it could also be the last. Blame it on a nasty gym problem. Residents of the second French handball division, the professional players of Rennes Métropole Handball still do not know where they will be able to train next week. Their manager warns. If no solution is found, it will be the end of the structure, created twenty years ago. An invitation has already been issued to club lovers to bury him on the occasion of the French Cup match scheduled for Saturday, September 10 at La Ricoquais.
Since the leaders of Rennes Métropole Handball decided to push the flagship team to D2, they faced a major difficulty. In a territory where the gymnasiums are overloaded, it is difficult for a club to afford the “best” evening slot between 6:30 p.m. and 8 p.m. For ten years, the “Roses” trained in the gymnasium of the Lycée Bréquigny, in Rennes. Not ideal because too small but very practical for lack of anything better. This year, the school has banned female handball players from playing with the resin they use to stick to the ball. “It’s as if we were asking footballers to play without a cleat,” summarizes Olivier Mantès, the coach and manager of the club, which has around twenty employees, including eleven players.
The club faced with “total silence”
The RMH, whose headquarters are located in Rennes, plays in competition at Saint-Grégoire on weekends. But impossible for the Ricoquais to welcome the team every night of the week to train. Without a solution, the club wanted to build its own gymnasium, reinvesting in a disused shed. But he came up against the local urban plan, which prohibits any new private project. “Today, we are calling on communities for help to be able to continue. But we have no return. It’s total silence, ”announces, annoyed, the manager. Contacted, Rennes Métropole was no more talkative with us, delivering a concrete argument. “Sport is not the competence of the metropolis. It is up to the cities to manage this”.
For the time being, only private structures have offered their help to Gregorian players. “But can we ask players to do 80 km a day, just to train? asks Olivier Mantès. From Tuesday, a solution will have to be found.