It wasn't entirely a surprise when the Marguerittes' hooker punched me squarely in the chops at the first maul of the game.

We were level-pegging in the league and the winner would seal promotion. We were playing at their home ground, on the outskirts of Nimes, southern France.

A French referee will never give a decision against the home team — not if he wants to get off the ground in one piece. But this ref was either brave or foolhardy and spotted the skulduggery. Penalty. Three points to us.

For the next 10 minutes, I "took one for the team", and that day the boot of Georges, our mercurial five-eighth, was metronome-like. Punch, penalty, kick. We were 12-0 up before the hooker's red mist abated.

Our victory that day was the perfect denouement to the season I spent in the colours of Jeunesse Sportive Avignon. All but two clubs in our league were village sides, and I was quite unprepared for the first away game. What seemed like all this hamlet's 1000 occupants were at the game, screaming blue murder the moment a blue-shirted Avignonais touched the ball.

To understand what rugby means to the French, delve into those villages that form the heartland of the Gallic game. A rugby team is a standard-bearer for village pride — what the French call "l'esprit de clocher", or the spirit of the church bells. On home turf, you'll hurl yourself into every tackle with gusto; away from home, a French side can roll over in a trice.

Against Noves, a Provencal village where little happens other than rugby and summertime bullfighting, we lost by a solitary point at home. Away, we were flogged 105-5.

That night, in the club bar, our president, Josette — proud, elegant, feisty — turned the air blue in roasting the 15 players who had so besmirched the club colours. "You've got no pride, you French, no pride … at least Ian — an Englishman! — showed some pride," she yelled, as I stared at the floor thinking what such a pronouncement would do to my popularity.

I still see Josette — now the town's deputy mayor — on visits to Europe. For years, she would ask: "When are you going to come back and play for us?" I know I'm getting old; now she asks: "When are you going to send over some big Australian forwards?"

This World Cup will show that it's not what rugby means to the French; it's what the French mean to rugby. Their very presence adds colour to what is a predominantly Commonwealth-dominated game — they're the Brazil of union. The combination of unpredictability and controlled thuggery make an intoxicating blend.

The French game is as dirty as it is beautiful, and as un-PC as it may be to say this, nothing quite gets the crowd going like a bit of aggro. The French see rugby as fairly close to boxing (You want silky skills? Play soccer), and in the late 1980s, any England versus France clash would be guaranteed a few skirmishes as old warriors such as the wonderfully named Jean Condom and Lancashire copper Wade Dooley belted the living daylights out of each other.

I once wondered why pitches had three-metre-high fences; I found out when we played at a ground that didn't. Our flanker, Bruno, a broad-chested fireman good enough to have contested the French rugby league cup final, knocked their winger into touch with a firm but fair tackle, only for two of their spectators to set on him.

This misplaced regional pride has sometimes gone tragically awry; in the late 1920s, players from the Quillan, Pau and Agen clubs died after fearful beatings meted out on the pitch, leading to France's expulsion from the Five Nations until 1939.

Another historical vignette the French would like to forget was the game's association with the collaborationist Vichy government during World War II.

But rugby in France is imbued with a refreshingly maverick spirit, too. Could you imagine a team in Brisbane, Leicester or Christchurch lining up a waiter to serve a half-time flute of champagne while wearing a bow-tie, as Paris side Racing Club did in the 1990 French cup final before defeating Agen?!

At the end of my season in France, another English player and I cooked the end-of-season dinner, eaten on trestle tables in the spring sunshine, then delivered a speech in French.

One of the gnarly old locks got up, kissed us both warmly on the cheek and welled up with tears. Tough, touching and so beautifully French.