“Running was not the answer. When I ran, the outcome was the same. I needed to face them.”

David Gérard isn’t talking about his time as a professional rugby player for Bordeaux, Toulouse or Northampton. He’s recalling the violent gangs who targeted him throughout his youth on the streets of his hometown, Toulon.

“I would fight, not because I’d want to, but because I had no choice,” he says. “You walk in the town and you have four, five, six people jumping on you, just to fight. You have to grow up as quick as possible, because if you’re still a kid in your head, they’re going to destroy you.”

David, now Portugal’s forwards coach, decided that running away was pointless and that facing his attackers head-on was the only way. This early lesson is something he’s carried throughout his life and it’s helped form the person and mentor he is today.

Understanding where someone comes from gives you a clearer picture of who they’ve become. In David’s case, it’s a person who’s resilient, funny and kind, a person who never settles and always gives back.

To understand who David is and how he became a European Champions Cup-winning player and Portugal coach at Rugby World Cup 2023, we need to go back to where he came from: a tough neighbourhood in Toulon.

“I’m from a poor area,” he says. “The rugby here is not just a sport, it’s part of me.” As a teenager, David didn’t see rugby as just a hobby, it was something that could lift him out of poverty, as well as the regular violence he encountered on the streets. 

“It saved my life,” he says with a shrug. “And my family’s too.” At 17, he shocked his family and friends by deciding to leave his hometown to sign for Bordeaux, almost 500 miles away. “If I’d stayed in Toulon, I’d be in trouble,” he says. “Most of the clubs in France wanted me to sign and if I did nothing, it would be the worst choice in my life.

“Sometimes you have to lose comfort if you want to achieve something great, something huge. I needed to lose my comfort and my family too because by leaving I lost everything.”

Everyone should be able to tell their own story, which is why we’ve given players and coaches like David cameras to document their lives in sport, and life all around it.

Alone in a new city, David had a different kind of fight on his hands in Bordeaux. “I was the only kid on this professional team,” he says. “It was up to me to find my place among players who were the same age as my father. I fought to find my spot and for three years I just played every game for Bordeaux.”

Rugby changed David’s life. Through this Inside View series, we want to change the way people see sport. In empowering the Portugal squad to tell their own stories, not only are we seeing rugby in a new light, but the players are seeing themselves with a new perspective too – from their position on the pitch, to their position in life.

Despite offers to coach in his homeland and an approach from Portugal’s national team, David turned to his nine-year-old daughter for advice. As part of her rugby education, he had shown her footage of Japan’s historic victory over South Africa in Rugby World Cup 2015. Seeing Japan’s supporters with tears of joy, she instantly knew her father should take up the challenge of coaching Portugal’s players to create more moments like that. “She said ‘go with them’. I said, ‘why’? She said, ‘because I want to see you happy’.”

It’s human stories like this that continually inspire his love for rugby. To David, statistics and what happens on the pitch only form part of the picture. It’s the people behind the game that interest him more – and it’s something he’s using Canon cameras to capture at the Rugby World Cup.

“Rugby is just rugby, it’s a sport,” he says. “We are humans who play sport, with troubles, with bad things in our lives, with good things, and this is great.”

“What’s more important to me is that I’m coaching a tighthead prop from France who has a wife, who has kids, who likes pasta, who hates rice, who laughs when you say something dirty, and who cries when you say you have to lose two kg.”

“I say to my players, if one of you has to cry in front of me, you have to cry. If one of you has to be aggressive in front of me, you have to be aggressive. Do not hide something, life is not like this.”

Whether its his players, his daughter or the people he helps through charity work, David hopes to inspire everyone to achieve things they thought impossible. Something great or something “not normal”.
Of course, he wants Portugal to win as many games as possible, but he is always looking beyond the sport to focus on the humanity behind it.     

“I want my daughter and everyone to feel something when they watch the boys play. To feel that we are not afraid when we play. We are not afraid to lose a game.

“We need to be afraid to lose our human side instead and what made us play rugby in the first place. I want my players to feel this. “I want her, at nine years old, to feel that too. To feel emotion because it’s what I want all people to feel. By seeing somebody fighting on the pitch, not for a result, more for pride, for faith. Faith is my favourite word. You need to have faith. Faith that the boys have the capacity to do something great.”

And although David says winning or losing isn’t everything, his love of sports movies projects into his dreams as he prepares for Portugal’s next Rugby World Cup 2023 match.
“I love sports movies because something not normal happens. And if one day Portugal do something not normal, then maybe we have a movie. And maybe Bruce Willis is going to play my father!”