HIGHLY RATED FRENCH coach Régis Sonnes will return to Bandon, Co. Cork, where he will work with underage teams at both Munster Junior League Division 1 outfit Bandon RFC and Bandon Grammar School, who campaign in the Munster Schools Senior Cup.
Sonnes previously coached at both Bandon rugby institutions between 2016 and 2018, leaving his role as forwards coach at Bordeaux Bègles after four years to take on a left-field passion project in the West Cork town.
The significant coup of Sonnes’ arrival in 2016 was the result of joined-up thinking between both club and school, who pooled their resources to bring a high-level, professional coach to the area.
Sonnes became head coach of both Bandon RFC’s senior team and the BGS’s Senior Cup team for three years, but his broader cultural impact on the sport — both in Bandon and in the wider West Cork — is still spoken about to this day.
Sonnes departed Bandon in 2018 and was catalytic in the recent resurgence of his former club Toulouse, serving as Ugo Mola’s defence coach as the Top 14 giants rediscovered their groove towards the turn of the decade.
Keen, as ever, to test himself in the lower echelons of his sport, he went on to exercise a clause in his Toulouse contract that allowed him to leave a year early, going on to coach youth players at French Fédérale 1 club Blagnac.
After also working with France U20s, Sonnes was named as head coach of struggling Pro D2 club Agen in November 2020, albeit his 11-month reign became merely the extension of a longer-running disaster at the club.
The 50-year-old Mont-de-Marsan native now returns to Bandon where he will act as an underage director of coaching for Bandon RFC, and a technical advisor for boys and girls rugby at Bandon Grammar School.
“BGS are proud to welcome back Régis Sonnes,” said Bandon Grammar in a statement.
“We look forward to working with Régis in the new season and learning from his vast experience and knowledge of coaching and playinf rugby.”
“This is a really positive outcome for the club’s and grammar school’s rugby future,” added Bandon RFC in a separate statement. “Bon retour Regis, and welcome back.”
As a player, Sonnes won three French titles with Toulouse in the 1994, 1995 and 1997. After the club’s success in ’95, he took a year out of rugby to go surfing on the Pacific coast of America and Mexico.
He went on to play for Brive in the 1998 Heineken Cup final against Bath.
Sonnes initially coached at Agen, Narbonne and CRC Madrid before taking the reins of the Spanish national team between 2010 and 2012.
From there, he joined Bordeaux as forwards coach in 2012 before his first move to Cork in 2016.
