Morocco

“In Islamic society, people normally think of ladies in general as having to stay at home and take care of their families, so whenever men see women playing these sports, they are afraid to see us as fearless.”

Among the clean, palm tree-lined streets of Marrakesh’s western district of Menara, surrounded on all sides by burnt orange and peach coloured buildings, lies the Zerktouni Stadium. A towering minaret from the local mosque overlooks the stadium’s lush grass, calling all those in the vicinity to prayer five times a day. 

For 29 young female Moroccans, the tower also symbolises their stop, as they arrive by bus for rugby training on Fridays and Saturdays.

They represent AMAR Marrakech, one of the city’s five rugby clubs and one of Morocco’s 28 clubs that provide female rugby. 

In well-maintained changing rooms, they get ready. Depending on their observance of Islamic dress rules, they either don socks, shorts and a jersey, or cover their skin with compression tights, gloves, long sleeves and ‘scarf-jerseys’ that cover the torso and head in one breathable garment. 

Once together, they go through their drills in the dappling afternoon sun. Sevens is the discipline of choice for women’s rugby teams in Morocco, and their training is geared around preparing for the five tournaments that form their season.

Tournament weekends are therefore much anticipated and AMAR (which stands for Association Marrakech Argan Rugby) will either host the event in  Marrakech, or travel east to Tinghir in the foothills of the Atlas Mountains, north to the olive tree-laden agricultural town of Kelaa Seraghna, or south to Agadir on Morocco’s Atlantic coastline.

Teams from these towns and cities, as well as another local Marrakesh side, form the southern region of the country’s rugby administration. AMAR are a mid-table team. But they are a team on the rise, having only been formed in 2016.

Whilst the Coronavirus has stopped all training at the club, the team’s development prior to the pandemic was rapid, partly due to their unusual training habit of playing full contact with the men’s team.  “When we finish our training, we play against the boys, which means you have to give the best you have,” AMAR’s captain Youssra Alaoui tells the Rugby Journal. “When we first started playing rugby I was slapping everyone in their face! I wanted to protect the ball, I was doing everything I could to protect the ball. 

“Sometimes we win, sometimes we don’t. But we like playing against boys as they teach us to be fearless.”

Youssra is one of the team’s players who have “opted to put the hijab on for life” and believes that observing this custom shouldn’t preclude any woman from being as fearless off the field as she is on it.  “The idea of women playing contact sport is a little bit awkward in Morocco,” she explains. “In Islamic society, people normally think of ladies in general as having to stay at home and take care of their families so whenever men – and women, but mainly men – see women playing these sports they are afraid to see us as fearless. They see it as a misinterpretation of our religion. But this is not just in Morocco, it is in Muslim countries in general I think.

“When I ask why they think it [rugby] should not be allowed for girls, I expect evidence, but people just say, ‘no, the prophet [Muhammad] says that these types of sports are not a luxury for women’. But when I go to search by myself I find that this is the opposite. There is no evidence that shows this. In general, the Qur’an  encourages both genders to practice physical activities to stay healthy. Our prophet was married to Aisha, he was one of the first men to encourage his wife to practice sports, this is an example which shows there is no difference between women and men playing sport.”

Youssra, is 25 and works as an English teacher, and has always been able to practice sport. When she was younger her three older brothers would let her play with them, whether that was in volleyball, football or basketball. They would give her a cycling helmet and leg protectors so that she didn’t get hurt, and so that they didn’t get in trouble with their mother. In the process, Youssra also built up a passion for sport and especially for motorbike racing. She watched endless tutorials online and even went to get her license without her parents knowing. But when her designs on racing were discovered, the parental foot well and truly came down. 

“My mum told me I can choose any sport I wanted, but not that one.”

So, she chose rugby, to just a smattering of dissent from her brothers who thought she would hurt herself, and some from her husband at the time too. 

“When I was married I was playing rugby and I did find some problems with my ex-husband saying ‘stop, you are getting hurt’ and ‘look at your body you have injuries’ and stuff like that. But you could still find me on the pitch!”

The resistance some of her team-mates have encountered, however, has been much greater.

“The father of one of our girls is very strict, he called us many times to say ‘stop calling my daughter to play’. He was one of those fathers who believes his daughter needs to stay home until her marriage. But step-by-step, we convinced him and we went to his house several times and eventually he was like ‘OK, I will let her go and train.’

“I’m 25 now, and the oldest in the side, so as well as being the captain, I am their big sister.”

Playing the big sister role for Youssra involves many things: helping fund players’ travel out of her own pocket, organising tournaments for the club for both women and men, and promoting women’s rugby within the Moroccan media and internationally.  “I don’t blame people who judge us because there is a lack of awareness about us. I blame the media for not being involved.

“If you go and google female rugby in Morocco you will find very few articles about us, actually I don’t think you would find any articles about us in Moroccan media! And this is not helping people to change their mindset. 

“I tried with our national media and sent them plenty of emails to shed light on what we are doing because we have a national team in Morocco and we have many talented girls. I succeeded in talking to some but I was expecting more, I was expecting people to turn their heads towards us. 

“So I gave up on our national media and contacted people abroad instead. I made a Facebook page and through that the Italian photographers Jean-Marc Caimi and Valentina Piccini contacted me and said, ‘we will be in Marrakech, would you be interested in us coming to meet you?’”

Jean-Marc and Valentina visited Marrakech in 2019, photographing Youssra and her team-mates at their homes and during a training session at the Zerktouni Stadium, coming up with the idea between them of taking photos of players playing rugby in traditional Moroccan dress.

“In western countries we think girls can play rugby no problem but it’s not the case in Morocco,” Jean-Marc said. “It’s surprising because Morocco is a nice place and it’s a developed country and you cannot imagine the struggles and difficulties these girls have been through with their families to play.

“Playing rugby for them is a message, it has a meaning. When you talk to them you understand that it’s important to them. It’s a choice for them to play and they have been fighting for that. 

“We hope these pictures make it clear how difficult it is for these girls to play rugby and what it means to them to be able to play rugby.”

The pictures have certainly caught the eye, first appearing in The Guardian newspaper in November last year and then attracting the attention of CNN who were planning on filming a feature with AMAR and other Marrakesh-based women’s teams before the Coronavirus hit.

CNN had done their research. When it comes to rugby in Morocco, there is a lot of ground to cover.

Rugby came to north Africa at the start of the 20th century when the French established Morocco as a Protectorate state, and helped themselves to certain parts of the country in exchange for protecting the Sultan Abdelhafid from internal opposition. 

That deal didn’t work out too well for the Sultan as he was soon replaced by his brother Yusef at the instigation of the French. Rugby fared much better, however, and within four years the Royal Moroccan Rugby Federation had been set up.

Because of its origins, Moroccan rugby looked north to Europe for competition and they played their first international against Spain on the 25th December 1931 in Rabat, losing 14-6. 

Three days later they exacted some revenge , securing a 10-10 draw against the same opponents. 

More than 30 years passed before Morocco joined a meaningful European competition: the FIRA Nations Cup. They hit the ground running, winning their Division 2 pool ahead of Spain, Portugal and Belgium and only  going down to Poland in the final. 

In 1970 they went one better and beat Spain in the final to gain promotion to Division 1. 

They competed well for a couple of seasons in what was effectively the Five Nations B league, losing to France’s second team 6-3 in Casablanca, and then beating Italy in Naples, but they couldn’t quite establish themselves at that level for any longer than a few seasons, becoming the yo-yo team between the two divisions for the rest of the 70’s and into 80’s. 

Then, towards the end of the 80s, Morocco selected a teenage lock who they reckoned was destined for great things in a national jersey. After a few games, the star-quality of the 19-year-old shone so brightly that a touring French club side, Luzech, who saw him playing against Czechoslovakia made the right advances and brought Abdelatif Benazzi to France. And, just like that, the greatest player Morocco has ever produced slipped from their grasp.

The magnitude of such a loss would not have been fully realised at the time and Morocco headed into the 90s continuing to punch above their weight. But had Benazzi still been around they may well have qualified for the World Cup for the first time in 1995. Needing a win by five points or more heading into their final qualifying match with Namibia in Casablanca, they could only muster a 16-16 draw, which handed the qualification spot to the Ivory Coast – a team Morocco had beaten just four days prior.

Benazzi would go on to earn 78 French caps, ten of them as captain, as one Les Bleus’ most popular players, until retirement knocked in 2001.

As professionalism dawned, Morocco’s amateur status endured and so did their participation in the now-termed European Nations Cup. That was until 2000, when, despite finishing third out of six countries with wins against Romania, the Netherlands and Spain, they relinquished their place in the tournament in favour of joining the newly-formed Africa Cup.

Once competing in Africa, success came readily. Between 2000 and 2005 they won two Africa Cup titles and finished as runner-up on a further three occasions. But since then, they’ve not contested a single final and have had to watch Namibia become the second-best African nation at 15s, after South Africa. What’s more, Uganda, Zimbabwe, and Kenya have all picked up titles whilst Morocco slipped from Division 1 to Division 2, and in some years down to Division 3, before being excluded all together in 2019 when a lack of corporate funding forced the competition to be trimmed to just seven nations. And Morocco didn’t make the cut. 

Although the men’s senior team was going backwards, steps forward were being made in the women’s game by now with the foundation of a senior women’s team who last year played on three occasions, including away against Tunisia.

Their development though has of course been halted by the coronavirus. Yet incredibly, the global pandemic wasn’t the worst thing to happen to rugby in Morocco this year.

March saw Rugby Africa and World Rugby suspend the membership of the Royal Moroccan Rugby Federation following the election of Driss Boujouala, the brother of the previous President Tahar Boujouala. The ban is in place for the rest of 2020 and extends to Morocco’s women’s and men’s teams, their sevens teams and junior teams. It will rule out the men’s senior team from attempting to qualify for the 2023 World Cup in France. 

The suspension is for the handling of the election itself, whilst the Moroccan federation’s reluctance to collaborate in a subsequent investigation hasn’t helped its cause.

For Youssra, it’s a source of great frustration. “It’s all a disaster and it’s the players who are the ones that are suffering. I feel very bad when I see articles about World Rugby’s Unstoppables campaign because I’ve talked to them several times and sent them emails [about women’s rugby in Morocco] and they have replied to say ‘you are prevented from all our activities for one year.’”

Youssra’s AMAR team are undoubtedly a good news story in Moroccan rugby, so to be prevented from promoting their progress is a tough pill to swallow. And whilst she’s aware the ban will be lifted, and rugby will come back, she feels Morocco’s poor rugby administration is causing players to drift out of the game. 

“Many talented boys and girls have given up from the bad administration and bad leaders we’ve had. I completely understand them because when you put in effort and good work, you need someone to think about you and to give you back some value.

“We will have people coming to the sport and people leaving, that’s obvious. If you leave because of a job or your family that’s one thing but if it’s because of a lack of funding or care from your union, that’s what hurts actually.

When rugby does come back to the Zerktouni Stadium, Youssra will be eagerly counting the numbers at training. If she doesn’t make it to 29, a recruitment drive may be in order, something she has a great deal of experience in.

“Before we were 29, we were just three girls which meant I was going into the street and whenever I saw a girl I said ‘hey, can you please come and join us, we are playing rugby.’ And I would start explaining that it doesn’t hurt that much and that they should come and watch us first before judging. If I spoke to five or six girls per day, I would get one or two at training and that’s enough. In 2019 I received around fifteen girls from this and about ten from the Facebook page ‘Association Marrakech Argan Rugby’. The good thing is when a girl sees her friend play in the stadium she will definitely come next time.”

Similar to other sports and countries around the world, 2020 may go down as one of Moroccan rugby’s lowest ebbs but with people like Youssra around, its most glorious days do not lie in having contributed one of France’s all-time great players plus a hatful of near misses against European powerhouses several decades ago, they lie in its future. The dawn of the new year can’t come soon enough. 

Story by Jack Zorab

Pictures by Jean-Marc Caimi & Valentina Piccinni

This extract was taken from issue 12 of Rugby.
To order the print journal, click here.