For more than 20 years, the departmental rugby committee can count on him, formerly to supervise the selections of Béarn, today to accompany the rugby schools of the department on the organization of tournaments (he himself has developed a turnkey software for clubs).
The volunteer also compiled the articles for our newspaper concerning the final stages of the Béarn championship and the French championship over 50 years, from 1969 to 2019. “It took me a lot of hours, months, years. The period of confinement allowed me to fine-tune the work”, smiles shyly Jean-Léon Pourteau.
“I compiled all of this because once I retired from playing I realized that I had a lot of memories in my head but I was missing something to pass on to my children. I started to make “books”, which I offered to coaches, club presidents…”
Retired for a year from national education – electronics teacher, he ended his career at Saint-Cricq high school in Pau – Jean-Léon Pourteau will have marked not only generations of students but also young rugby players.
Jean-Léon was born at the family home, in the Ossau valley, in Saint-Colome, in July 1960, shortly after his half-twin brother Jean-Michel. Naturally he will join the rugby school of Arudy. “I played there until senior, in Federal 3, as a winger or center.” In 1983, Léon left for the army, on the coast, joined the Biarritz team, at the highest level of the time, “alongside Serge Blanco.
Back in Arudy, he will live in 1986 the match of a lifetime, with his Etoile Sportive teammates: a 3rd division final, unfortunately lost 8 to 17 against Aix-en-Provence, on the ground of Argelès -on sea.
His work as a teacher then took him to the Landes, near Dax. Coming back to Ossau three days a week quickly becomes tiring and Léon chooses to wear the Montfort-en-Chalosse jersey until 1996.
A transfer to Béarn allowed him to return to his club in Arudy at the end of the 1990s. Jean-Lén Pourteau put down his crampons but gave of himself: for nearly 5 years, he was in charge of the school of rugby. At that time, the young people who had become pros succeeded there, Julien Dumora (Lympic Castres), Adrien Latorre (end of career at AS Béziers, Pro D2), Yohan Beheregaray (ASM Clermont) and his own youngest son Franck Pourteau (Rouen NR, Pro D2).
In the early 2000s, the electronics teacher in Pau slowed down in the club but did not let go of leather. He joined the committees of Béarn and 64, to supervise the selections (M14 / M15), for nearly 15 years.
He tasted again in the field, on the bench of the USO alongside Philippe Ebel and Dominique Gueracague (2011-2012), then with the cadets of Bizanos.
The oval ball took up a lot, a lot of space. Leon takes a break. But very quickly Daniel pédaillé, the current president of the departmental committee of rugby, will come to seek it to continue the federal adventure. “I couldn’t refuse… I’ve been retired from national education for a year, but for the committee, I’m doing more than full time today. And voluntarily. In some committees, a representative of the Rugby Schools Committee has 3 schools to manage. I have 40…”
The call for volunteers
Jean-Léon Pourteau, a full-time volunteer on behalf of the departmental committee of Rugny, is concerned to see volunteering in clubs undergoing a new slap with the extension of the retirement age. “Older retirees will probably think twice before going on assignments that take up weekends…”
Born in Sainte-Colome
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