Claude PAILLÈRE

Claude Paillère was a striker who was born in the Gironde region of France. He began his playing career in 1945 in the Second Division with Le Mans. In 1947, he signed for Le Havre for the last few months of the 1946/1947 season, which would alas see his team from Normandy get relegated at the end of the campaign. He would then be recruited by Stade Rennais, who were looking for players to bolster their attack after the departures of Simonyi and Rabstejnek. Selected to play on the right wing, he would only taste defeat once in a Red and Black shirt in the First Division when he was in the starting line-up. He would make 33 appearances, scoring 17 goals (of which 15 came in the league), making him the 2nd best goalscorer for Rennes, and the 11th-ranked goalscorer in the the First Division that season. He would spend just one season with Rennes, as he signed for Lens for the 1948/1949 season, winning the Second Division title with them in the 1949/1950 season. Between 1949 and 1951, he played for Béziers, where he would score over half of his teams goals during the the 1949/1950 season. He then spent five months (August-December 1951), where he was given 8 starts without winning a single one of them. He subsequently moved on to Amiens, where he would play for a year-and-a-half, before finishing his playing career back at Béziers in 1953.