Several hundred supporters gathered Thursday evening in front of the hall of the Gravelines basketball club (first division) ravaged by a fire on Monday for a last “goodbye” to their “cathedral”, noted an AFP correspondent .
“It is a symbolic gathering which marks the attachment of people to this cathedral and to the club”, affirmed Christian Devos the president of the BCM at the very moment when the meeting between the northern club and Paris FC should have been held, canceled at cause of the fire.
“We are going to be courageous and we are going to find solutions (…) We will be able to get back together,” Marie France Louf, president of the Les Irréducibles supporters group, declared on the microphone. For Geoffrey Bailly, the president of the Marines, this fire is “an ordeal”, “it hurts, but we will be there today and tomorrow we will be there”, he assured.
“We are going to fight on the pitch to finish the season. We started the championship badly but we are getting back up and with you and your dedication we are going to keep going, we are going to fight,” declared a club player, Valentin Cherry. Monday afternoon, a violent fire started from the swimming pool on the site and spread to the 3,000-seat hall, well known in France for basketball, which is now destroyed. The investigation must determine whether the offense of “destruction of the property of others by means dangerous to people” is characterized.
For the club, 17th and penultimate, the urgency now is to find one or more rooms in which to train before the home match scheduled for January 20 against Nanterre, whose outfit does not seem to be threatened. Meetings are multiplying between the club, French basketball authorities and local authorities to choose a room. According to Patrice Vergriete, president of the Dunkirk urban community and former mayor of Dunkirk, the preferred solution consists of adapting Dewerdt, the Dunkirk hall, where the handball players play. The other option concerns the Calypso room in Calais, according to the LNB.
