The proceedings started in the early afternoon but the court had to postpone the trial as one of the three co-accused of gang rape, Irishman Denis Coulson, was absent.

“Unfortunately, he was involved in an extremely serious road accident,” said his lawyer Corinne Dreyfus-Schmidt. “He is still in hospital with polytrauma.”

The trial in southwestern city Bordeaux, scene of the suspected rape, will therefore take place to a later date, from 2 to 13 December 2024.

It will turn on whether a young woman, now 27, was too drunk to consent to sex.

What is consent? At what point is it diminished or even totally absent?” one of her lawyers, Anne Cadiot-Feidt, told French news agency AFP.

Named only as V., the plaintiff has opted for anonymity to protect her personal and professional lives, her lawyers say.

Irishman Denis Coulson, 30, New Zealander Rory Grice, 34, and French 29-year-old Loick Jammes are accused of raping the plaintiff.

Two fellow players, 31-year-old Irishman Chris Farrell – a member of Ireland’s Grand Slam-winning 2018 Six Nations squad – and New Zealander Dylan Hayes, 30, are being tried for failing to prevent a crime.

V. and two friends encountered the rugby players in a Bordeaux bar after the Grenoble team played a Top 14 championship match on 11 March, 2017 – a few months before the #MeToo movement was sparked in the United States.

The group guzzled cocktails including mojitos and Vodka-Red Bull as they moved on to a nightclub.

Toxicologist’s report

V. said she remembered nothing about how the night ended after leaving the nightclub.

She boarded a taxi headed for the players’ hotel with Coulson around 4.00 am.

A toxicologist’s report found that V. had between 2.2 and 3.0 grams of alcohol per litre of blood at that point – well over 10 times the maximum allowed when driving in France.

Surveillance footage from her arrival at the hotel shows her struggling to stand as Coulson supports her.

He also appears to twice prevent her from re-boarding the taxi.

V. said she woke up naked on a bed with a crutch in her vagina at around 7.00 am alongside two naked men and others still wearing clothes.

Victim’s consent

Lawyer Cadiot-Feidt said arguments in the trial would likely focus on “the question of the victim’s responsibility in a situation where she voluntarily put herself in a state reducing or eliminating consent”.

“We often ask questions about the victim’s consent and not at all about how attackers judge their consent,” she added.

Cadiot-Feidt charged that there is a “high level of tolerance” to alcohol-fuelled incidents among some French rugby clubs and supporters.

She said she hoped the case would help better prevent sexual violence within certain sports cultures.

Sports “clubs have their charters, which are clear”, she said. “But in practice a lot remains to be done.”

Testimony from the defendants and witnesses, as well as a video Coulson filmed during a sex act, suggest the group engaged in oral sex with V. as well as penetrating her with objects including crutches.

Coulson, Jammes and Grice have all acknowledged engaging in sex acts with V., but insist they were consensual.

“This isn’t the trial of rapist rugby players, it’s the trial of alcohol,” said Corinne Dreyfus-Schmidt, representing Coulson.

A “climate” around the #MeToo movement “was not favourable to understanding” in such cases, she added.

“All these young people drinking until they’re in an absolute state is the real problem in this case,” Dreyfus-Schmidt said.

Jammes’s lawyer Denis Dreyfus said he too expected the hearings to turn on the difficulty of securing consent when “all parties are drunk”.