Bordeaux (AFP)

The Autumn Nations Cup is a "great opportunity" for Georgia, a nation in constant progression but which rarely has the opportunity to rub shoulders with the best, explains in an interview with AFP Beka Gorgadze, the third center line of Bordeaux-Bègles and Lelos on Saturday against England at Twickenham.

Q: England, Wales, Ireland on the menu ... Is this Autumn Nations Cup a success for Georgia?

A: "We've never had the opportunity to play this kind of competition. Since 2015, we've been talking a lot about us, about the opportunity to join the Six Nations Tournament as a replacement for the 6th, stuff like that. The Six Nations B Tournament (with Spain, Russia, Romania, etc.) has become, without malice for other nations, easy to win. We really need these high level matches and if not the world, we have very few opportunities to be able to progress.This Fall Cup is a great opportunity even if it is not the best time to play these matches because it is complicated since the start of the Covid, since the last World Cup (2019). To prepare for this competition, we played in Scotland (defeat 48-7) but we should have played (end of October) against Russia, the last match of the VI Nations B which was postponed. do not know when. We would have liked to play this kind of matches in Tbilisi but it is not current. Playing against the teams

Tier-1 pes (the first level), that's what keeps us going. "

Q: What are you really missing is the sequence of these high-level matches?

A: "The last time we faced three big nations was at the 2007 World Cup with Argentina, France and Ireland. We hung on Ireland (14-10) in Bordeaux , I was young but I remember this crazy match. We had been very close but since then Ireland has made a lot of progress, too, but we come back to the experience acquired by the Tier-1 teams who play one against the other while we are going back to Tournament B, even against Tier-3 opponents. "

Q: Your team will have a strong French connotation, with half of the players passing through the Top 14 or Pro D2.

Is France still an El Dorado for Georgian rugby players?

A: "The door to France opened in the 2000s. For the generation that preceded me, mine, our goal was to arrive in France. Afterwards, there are a lot of players who have passed. by England but there are more common interests between the French clubs and us. We must not forget that the first foreign technicians in Georgia were French. The French coaches really like our profiles, our forwards rather (laughs). We all know that there is the economic aspect. It costs less. Afterwards, some clubs target us in terms of their way of playing, their system, their project but also their DNA, their culture. "

Q: Can you tell us about your arrival in France?

A: "It was the former Grenoble and Castres scrum half Paliko Jimsheladze, who is my best friend's uncle in Georgia and who put me in touch with an agent. He analyzed the contract and everything. There are many former players who have passed through France and who give us advice before coming here. When I landed at 18 in Mont-de-Marsan, I was the only Georgian, c "It's more complicated than when there are four or five in the team. You have no choice, the first thing is to learn the language and being alone made me progress quickly. It was lucky. If I had been in a team with a lot of Georgians, to spend a lot of time together because we are very close, it is not sure that I would have learned French so quickly. "

© 2020 AFP