125 years of Stade Rennais: In search of the lost anarcho

Founded on March 10, 1901 by sports-loving students, Stade Rennais did not adopt its iconic red and black colors until 1904. It owes them to FC Rennais with which it merged. But the reasons for this choice remain subject to interpretations. Anarcho-syndicalists could be involved. Myth or reality? It had to be dug a little deeper.

For its 125th anniversary, Stade Rennais focused its communication around the club’s identity. In a football world that is increasingly standardized, with players, coaches, and executives being interchangeable, this is no easy task. The colors of a sports club tell a part of its history and can reveal things about its identity. Sometimes it’s just an anecdote. It can also become an object of research in itself.

The origin of Stade Rennais’ colors is known. Three years after its creation, the club – then playing in sky blue and navy – merged with FC Rennais. The new entity kept the colors of the latter and took the name Stade Rennais Université Club (SRUC) until 1972. The reasons behind the initial choice of red and black by the founders of FC Rennais – named F.C.R or F-B.C.R in the newspapers – remain shrouded in mystery.

As a pioneer of Breton football, FC Rennais had a short existence. From the end of the 19th century, a time when there was no championship in Brittany yet, the press mentions its ‘training matches’ against Saint-Servan or Avranches. Its field was located on one of the meadows of Villeneuve, on Paul Féval street. In 1900, reporting on a crushing victory against Stade Vannetais, La Dépêche Bretonne tells that the club wore “a flannel shirt in red and black colors.” In 1901, L’Ouest-Éclair also mentions “a red jersey with a black star.”

Do red and black colors not go hand in hand?

In his Encyclopédie du Stade Rennais, Claude Loire – an amateur historian who conducted important work archiving the club – put forward a theory without dwelling on it: the choice of red and black colors would come from the connection between FC Rennais and anarcho-syndicalists. On the Stade Rennais Online platform, he had presented this idea, adding that “Rennes was nicknamed in the Middle Ages the ‘red city’, in reference to the red schist of the ‘purple country’. Red and black were adopted because FC Rennais, founded by students in the anarcho-syndicalist movement, was older.”

In theory, the story is almost beautiful and romantic, but does it stand the test of historical facts? Especially as Mr. Loire’s full statements, also reported by Ouest-France, further blur the lines by attributing to the jersey “an identity mark, with the red color of the republic, and Catholic, with the black of the priests’ cassocks.” This amounts to projecting a very contemporary interpretation of secularism that does not quite fit the political context of the Third Republic. The radicals at the start of the century were indeed fierce anticlericals and did not advocate peaceful cohabitation with “the biretta.”

However, the hypothesis of a connection between the club’s colors and the founders’ commitment to secularism is not to be ruled out. This link is widely recognized, for example, in the case of En Avant Guingamp, founded in 1912. Press archives consulted simply did not establish a link between F.C.R and its founding members with the secular movement. Caution is also warranted as the Breton capital had a reputation for being dominated, especially among students, by Catholic, conservative, and militaristic currents.

Socialists and secularists had to contend with a hostile climate and a largely anti-Dreyfusard public opinion. As the retrial of Captain Dreyfus approached, scheduled in Rennes in 1899, malicious and anti-Semitic acts multiplied. Unionized workers were largely pro-Dreyfus, contrary to the students who organized several protests outside the home of Victor Basch, a philosophy professor at the University of Rennes and founder of the local section of the League of Human Rights.

FC Rennais, the darling of the notables

Breton football was still in its early stages. Like in other regions, its practice was initially the preserve of well-born offspring, often Anglophiles. Around fifty players defended FC Rennais’ colors between its beginnings, marked by rare friendly matches, and the official launch of the first Brittany championship in 1903. Meanwhile, F.C.R was briefly renamed FC Armoricain before reverting to its original name. It mainly attracted law, medicine, and occasionally agriculture students.

The club, which was based at the Europe café, maintained privileged links with the city’s oldest sports society, the bourgeois Société des Régates Rennaises. It also attracted the favor of Dr. René Patay Jr. and Albert Pavec, a lawyer at the Court of Appeal. Among the central figures of the club were the Faux brothers, Henri and Maurice, Albert Durocher, Maurice Moy – also known as a painter – and the versatile athlete, Alexandre Couchouren. All future doctors, lawyers, or pharmacists!

If there was no formal mention of anarcho-syndicalism during FC Rennais’ existence from 1896 to 1904, this proximity to the Rennes elite makes any link to the anarchist or libertarian movement quite improbable, especially present in the Bourse du Travail. One thing is certain: we are not talking about a working-class football. Indeed, it was only after the war that football truly developed within the proletariat, as Alfred Wahl explains.

So why did Claude Loire mention the “anarcho-syndicalist movement” at FC Rennais? The mystery may have thickened, but further exploration is required to find the truth behind this story. Meanwhile, the red and black colors endure at Stade Rennais, in a football business where identity is primarily a marketing argument.