Football players bare all to keep club going

Love us and save us, New Year is just around the corner, and that of course means for many the need to buy a new diary or calendar.

That's probably what the players of one amateur French football side were banking on when they decided to raise money for their indebted club.

They've come out with their own version of the popular "Dieux du Stade" (Gods of the Stadium) calendar, by baring their all for the camera in (and the joke only really works in French) what they've called "Vieux du Stade" (Oldies of the stadium).

Players from Marbache get their kit off (screenshot from TF1 news report)

While the professional version features six-pack torsos and rippling biceps of players from the Paris-based rugby team Stade Français, members of the Olympique Marbache-Belleville-Dieulouard club in the eastern French département of Meurthe and Moselle have posed for an edition which is...well more modest.

There's none of that semi-nude, erotic black and white photography nonsense that has been a trademark of Dieux du Stade annually since 2001.

Instead it seems to be more a case of "kit off off, tummies in and cheese".

If you want take a look at some of the photos, you can find them on the site of the regional newspaper L'Est républicain.

The whole idea of course is to raise money and in particular ensure there'll be enough cash in the pot to keep its youth teams going.

The very future of the club has been thrown into jeopardy over the past year after the local authority grant was slashed by 65 per cent.

"We need money for equipment and to pay referees," director and player Laurent Pavesi told TF1 news

"In fact we simply need money to keep the club going."

That obviously means doing just about anything - within reason - which hasn't, it has to be said, displeased the local population and in particular the women.

Even the players' wives seem to be quite happy about getting "behind" the idea as you can hear on the accompanying video, and the first run of 800 calendars at €5 a pop have all been snapped up.

And that has meant ordering another 400 from the printers.

Good for them!

Would you have the balls to do the same?

"Les vieux du stade" se déshabillent pour sauver leur club

Loose horses bring motorway to a standstill

Drivers on a motorway in eastern France had more than just the usual rush hour traffic to contend with on Wednesday morning after 23 horses broke loose from an equestrian centre and galloped their way to freedom.

Horse rescue on A36 motorway, screen shot FR3 Television

Somehow the 23 horses from equestrian centre in the village of Brognard managed to escape from a field in which they had been grazing and headed off towards the A36.

As the regional daily L'Est républicain reports, once the cavalcade hit the motorway between the towns of Montbéliard and Belfort, the horses panicked, breaking up into smaller groups and galloping off in different directions.

Police, firefighters and workers on a nearby high-speed railway line joined forces to take matters in hand, reports the paper, but it still took a couple of hours for all the horses to be rounded up before the traffic could return to normal.

(You can see some more photos of the rescue on the newspaper's site)

The only wounds the horses sustained apparently were to a couple of cuts that needed stitches and one horse which required a sedative after finding itself trapped between the motorway's security barriers.

The whole incident could have had a far unhappier ending as a spokesman for the equestrian centre said when contacted by the French website Le Post.

There had been 38 horses in total in the field but 15 of them had stayed put.

"The other 23 are now back in their boxes and are under observation," the spokesperson told the website.

"Fortunately no person was injured during the breakout and there wasn't a pile up on the motorway."

Des chevaux sur l'A 36