Alain Estève, rugged French rugby union international known as ‘the Beast of Béziers’ – obituary

Alain Estève, who has died aged 77, was a terrifying 6ft 9in, 19-stone bearded French rugby union lock who was capped 20 times in the early 1970s and was a key member of the ferocious Béziers pack which dominated the French game in the 1970s and 1980s.

Estève rose to prominence at a time when the policing of the game was a great deal more lax than it is today. Only the referee could make decisions; there was no TMO, and the touch judges were not able to flag for foul play. If the referee did not see something happen, then to all intents and purposes it did not. If he sent a player off, he was seen as losing control of a match.

French club rugby of the era was described as “Une guerre avec un ballon”, and Béziers players were at the heart of a system based on overt physicality, a mastery of contact skills and a complete command of such dark arts as “la fourchette” (eye-gouging), and the “coup de tête” (headbutt).

Estève’s Béziers teammates included such tough nuts as the 26-times capped Armand Vaquerin, who managed to shoot himself dead playing Russian roulette aged 42, and the 23-times capped Michel Palmié, a man who, according to Rugby Magazine, “punched and gouged his way from Paris to Toulouse” before being banned in 1978 after being convicted of blinding an opponent in one eye (though he somehow finished up in charge of discipline at the French Rugby Federation).

But in a decade notorious for its on-pitch violence, Estève, known in Britain as “the Beast of Béziers”, and in France under such nicknames as “Le Grand”, “La Tour Eiffel” and (more puzzlingly) “Le Dindon” (turkey), stood out. And as Wales v France matches were invariably the highlight of the Five Nations tournaments of the era, it was Welsh players who had cause to remember him with particular dread.

Even Bobby Windsor, the former Pontypool, Wales and Lions hard man and hooker, confessed to a reluctance to cross the English Channel for a game. “I’m not saying they were a dirty bunch,” he recalled of Les Bleus, “but I used to say to my wife: ‘Take a good look at me now, because you won’t recognise me by the time I get back.’ I played against the Froggies five times and I had my nose busted every single time. I swear that Alain Estève used to try to kill me.”

When the scrum packed down, the Welsh hooker would hold his right arm in front of him to ward off the blows and would hear Estève taunting him with calls of “‘Bob-bee, Bob-bee”: “and then this big fist would come through and smack you in the chops. To get my own back, I [once] booted him in the [face] as hard as I could. He got up and gave me a wink. It takes a lot to scare me but I thought: ‘Bloody hell!’”

“I always preferred to be the butcher rather than the veal,” Estève informed an interviewer in 2021.

Yet off the pitch Windsor and his tormentor became the greatest of friends. “After the dinner, he and the others would take me to Pigalle and on to the stage with them at the Folies Bergère.” The French players called Windsor the “Duc de Fer” (Iron Duke), a reference to the victor of Waterloo: “They’d look after me all night long. One year they looked after a few of us so well that we missed the flight home the next day... The funny thing about the Froggies was that they’d do terrifying things on the pitch and then they’d go from being your worst enemy to your best friend.”

Had he not been so keen on nightlife, Estève would probably have won more caps for France, but his international career ended in 1975 after a 4am bender the night before France played England at Twickenham – a match Les Bleus would still go on to win. But he enjoyed the fact that whenever lists are compiled of the most terrifying rugby players ever known, his name is always to be found at or near the top.

Alain Estève was born on September 15 1946 at Castelnaudary, in the Occitanie region of southern France, the son of a poor farm labourer. In an autobiography published last year he described a troubled childhood during which he spent 10 years in a reformatory, where he was abused by priests who were supposed to be looking after him. He tried to escape in his teens but ended up being locked up for a month in a dungeon. Rugby was his salvation.

He started playing in Castelnaudary and spent a short period with Narbonne joining Béziers aged 20. Between 1971 and 1981 he was instrumental in the team winning eight French championship titles. He gained notoriety in 1971 when, during the final against Toulon, the Toulon captain André Herrero appeared to be knocked out, apparently after a kick in the back not witnessed by the referee, and taken off the field on a stretcher.

Though he returned to complete the match Herrero claimed that four of his ribs had been broken and named Estève as the culprit. Estève, however, always denied the charge, accusing Herrero of faking the injury and of being a communist.

As well as being a key member of the French side that won the Five Nations in 1973, Estève toured with Les Bleus to South Africa in 1971 and Australia in 1972, and helped the team beat the All Blacks 13-6 at Parc des Princes in 1973.

One player who seems to have given Estève as good as he got was the England player Mike Burton, who recalled how, during a France v England match, the French had “been dishing it out as usual [so] when Estève caught a drop-out, I got my boot under him and he shot back five metres on the greasy pitch, like a dog skidding on its backside. I went to swap jerseys with him at the end and he said: “Non, Burton. Vous êtes dirt-tee!’ ”

Most of Estève’s life, after his retirement from rugby in 1982, remains a mystery, though long after the end of his career he seems to have made a name for himself as the owner of several nightclubs in Béziers. In 2004 he was convicted and jailed for “aggravated pimping”, for exploiting the services of young women from Eastern Europe whom he had brought to France.

“[Prison was] very good, just like at home,” he told Midi Olympique. “There, as long as you have money, you are at peace.”

Alain Estève, born September 15 1946, died November 7 2023