“A strange place to stay”: The All Blacks revolt against their hotel in Creteil
They and France were eliminated from the Rugby World Cup with an exasperating defeat in the final by one point (12-11) to South Africa on 28 October. The competition was concluded in the rain and cold by the All Blacks at the Stade de France, a month and a half after its start with another setback (27-13) in the heat wave against the French XV in the same place.
A meeting attended by many absentees due to injury, including captain Sam Keane, and the accommodation conditions were criticized by former New Zealand coach Ian Foster in an interview conducted Thursday with… the team. He details these few days he spent at the Novotel Hotel in Creteil (Val-de-Marne).
“We had problems with the air conditioning not working. It was 36 degrees, and we felt like we were ten degrees warmer inside. We were running out of air.”. Every time the toaster was turned on, people would leave the establishment. It was not the ideal place to prepare for the opening match of the World Cup.
“We settled in the place designated by the World Rugby Union. It seems that after us, the teams that were scheduled to stay there, Argentina I think, were housed elsewhere (the Argentines took over the XV de France hotel in the Rueil-Malmaison), Foster continues. We didn’t want that to be an excuse for our defeat to France. […] We were not good, especially in the last quarter of an hour. This is in no way this hotel’s fault. »
“The Paris region has no shortage of the most suitable places.”
Who there imagines that they were placed in a failed institution to harm them before confronting them against the organized state? “Honestly, I don’t know. It was a strange place to accommodate us, as the Paris region has no shortage of more suitable places, closer to the stadium. This is it,” concludes Ian Foster.
The Novotel hotel in Créteil and its air conditioning problems have already been targeted in an article in New Zealand Herald Released at the beginning of November. A story in which the newspaper attacks “a shoddy hotel that advertises itself as four stars while no one knows if it really deserves three.”
Defects? Stifling heat that would have prompted some players to install mattresses in the corridor to try to sleep without suffocating, lack of a meeting room, dirty kitchen. Finally, the fire alarm went off at 3am the night before the clash against the Blues.
Contacted by the teamThe Accor group that runs this hotel admitted that three rooms had an air conditioning problem on the night of September 6 to 7. The players in question reportedly refused to change rooms to install air conditioning before deciding to go out the next day.
But Accor denies setting off a fire alarm, having a problem in the kitchens or having players sleeping in the hallways. He confirms that the hotel did not leave the rotation of places allocated to the World Cup teams. Note that none of the four semi-finalists who came to settle in the Paris region have yet settled in Créteil. Especially not all black people.
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