IF THE FRENCH Pro D2 hasn’t been part of your rugby diet, you’ve been missing out.

So think the creators of FR-UK Rugby, a YouTube channel that has been broadcasting live Pro D2 games with English commentary for free since the tail-end of last season.

FR-UK are now into their first full campaign of streaming Pro D2 matches in Ireland and the UK, with ambitions to begin showing live Top 14 games in the next year or two.

The channel also provides highlights, round-ups, analysis, interviews, and player focus pieces, giving Irish and UK-based rugby fans in-depth coverage of French rugby en anglais.

It all started with Joe Worsley, the World Cup-winning former England and Wasps back row, wondering why no one was doing this already.

Worsley has coached with Bordeaux, Clermont and Castres, and now works with Pro D2 club Brive.

“Living in the thick of it for 10 years, I love French rugby,” says Worsley.

“I started thinking, ‘There’s an opportunity here.’ And I found out the price of the rights was affordable.”

He made contact with Dougie Andrews, an experienced TV producer and director, and the ball was rolling. They soon had James Lewis, who has been with Sky Sports for 15 years, on board. 

The other key part of the team is Tim Cocker, a presenter and reporter who previously worked with BT Sport alongside Andrews, but swivelled into becoming a rugby YouTuber more recently. Cocker’s personal channel, ‘Eggchasers,’ became hugely popular during the 2023 World Cup. So he knew the landscape on YouTube well.

Former England back row Joe Worsley. FR-UK Rugby FR-UK Rugby

One of the first things the FR-UK quartet did was gather for a mini-tour of France, visiting places like Bayonne, Biarritz, Toulouse, Pau, Castres, and Brive. Worsley was able to open doors.

And that starting point strengthened their view that French rugby had something special that needed to be shared with fans in the UK and Ireland, who have only had glimpses up until now.

“We’ve always loved everything about French rugby,” says Lewis, who recently produced the British and Irish Lions coverage on Sky.

“The Top 14 is the strongest domestic championship in the world; it’s got the best players in the world.

“There’s a real romance attached to French rugby, and it just feels like maybe it’s at a place where Premier League football was in the mid-90s, where it’s on the precipice of growing into an international behemoth.

“These opportunities don’t come along very often and we felt we should have a crack at this.”

Cocker is the lead commentator on FR-UK, while Worsley provides live analysis alongside him. 

They aim for a more relaxed, upbeat tone than might traditionally be the case with sports broadcasting on TV. Being on YouTube feeds into a sense of freedom and while providing precise commentary on the actual games is still crucial, there’s a fresh vibe to FR-UK’s coverage.

“On YouTube, I do think there’s a slightly different expectation,” says Cocker.

“Yes, you want to do a professional job, but I actually think – even though the analytics show that the majority of people watch our live games on an actual television – it gives you license to have a slightly different voice, and it could be more fun at times. It’s only small degrees.

An inteview with Biarritz wing Zak Kibirige. FR-UK Rugby FR-UK Rugby

“For example, one of the identities of Pro D2 is the bagarre générale, fighting and handbags in that old-school fashion. So getting the boxing bell sound effect out when stuff like that happens… I think you can play a little bit more. You can get in the sandbox and have a little play.”

Live sport on YouTube is still in its infancy and though they weren’t the first to do it, Lewis believes that FR-UK are trailblazers in this regard, citing how Germany’s Bundesliga football league sold rights to YouTuber Mark Goldbridge, best known for Man United watchalongs, this season.

Worsley says that the Ligue Nationale de Rugby [LNR], the governing body of professional French club rugby, were initially a little nervous about the idea of games being broadcast on YouTube rather than TV.

That’s one of the reasons FR-UK have started with Pro D2 games rather than leaping straight into the Top 14, allowing the LNR to get a sense of how it all works on YouTube. Canal+, who broadcast the Top 14 in France, were advocates for FR-UK, encouraging the French clubs to give them a chance.

Technically, it’s an intricate operation for FR-UK to get these games onto YouTube. That’s where Andrews’ expertise comes in.

He sits in his office in the UK, taking in a feed of the game from the French producers, then overlays the remote commentary provided by Cocker and Worsley. As well as the live games, Andrews puts together all the other content on FR-UK Rugby.

“I spend many, many, many, many, many, hours in front of this computer making content and listening to Joe and Tim talking about rugby,” says Andrews, before joking that the gloss is wearing off, given how often he hears those voices.

“Joe’s stuff is probably one of the most underappreciated bits of our content. We’ve got a World Cup-winning, current top-line coach who’s giving deep insights.”

Worsley says that French players, clubs, and coaches are more open than is the case elsewhere, which is valuable as the channel bids to continue growing that offering outside the live games. 

The FR-UK team are passionate about this side of things, Cocker in particular.

“I sometimes get frustrated by the lack of care and love that rugby content gets,” he says.

Tim Cocker of FR-UK Rugby. Laszlo Geczo / INPHO Laszlo Geczo / INPHO / INPHO

“Sports broadcast rights are often just filling up schedule space. Whereas actually what we want to create is a whole universe around it, which takes you as deep as you want to go into it – the players, the legends, the culture of the town, what it’s like on a match day.

“One of the reasons my own channel, Eggchasers, blew up was because during the World Cup, I was about the only person that was consistently out there telling one of the big stories of the World Cup, which is everything that goes on outside the 80 minutes and just outside the stadium.

“That’s one of the absolute jewels in the crown, the whole culture of rugby.”

He speaks about peeling back the layers of French rugby, whether they’re cultural or tactical. Cocker believes that rugby fans appreciate this sense of care.

These are still early days, but it has been a promising start to life for FR-UK, with last season’s Pro D2 play-off games attracting lots of interest, with Provence’s clash with Soyaux Angoulême getting more than 21,000 views. They haven’t hit such figures early this season and Cocker jokes that “a cold, wet night in Dax in the middle of October” is the equivalent of football’s fabled cold, rainy night in Stoke, but it’s clear there is interest.

Andrews adds that they’re always learning more about the workings of the YouTube algorithm to get their work in front of more eyes. 

Lewis says that FR-UK are also actively looking for sponsorship and investment to further boost their plans.

And those involve gaining rights for Top 14 games in the near future.

“Given that our relationship with the LNR and Canal+ has been really positive and they’ve trusted us and taken a bit of a punt on us thus far, we would like to think that they’ll apply the same sort of logic to our discussions around the Top 14,” says Lewis.

“Hopefully in the next sort of year or two, you’ll see a bit of Top 14 on our channel too.

“And then after that, who knows? In five years’ time, maybe we will be getting the Sunday night prime time game.”

It’s worth watching this space for a few different reasons.