Where was I before we were rudely interrupted?
Barcelona’s Camp Nou. In the lifetime of any professional sportsperson, performing in the Catalan cathedral, in front of 95,000 fans, must rank high on any bucket list. Even yesterday, down the river, stoking the fires that raged that June 24 against Toulon is too easy. Too easy for all of us in Racing.
We are not coping well with success. I got to a stage in my career with Munster and Ireland where I was expert at coping with failure. This is a different sort of problem I’d forgotten about, one Munster experienced in 2007 after our first European Cup success. We were brutal that year, but in 2008 we got our mojo back, motivated to a huge extent by an incredible group of players and leaders.
Ahead of tomorrow’s city derby against Stade Francais, we have won our three home games in Top 14, and lost all four of our away ones. You think you are prepared for an away game, but you go to Castres or Brive, and the whole town stops. There’s a French saying, without a direct English translation, that the champions entitle are coming this weekend. It’s a compliment. Every away game for Racing is a celebration of rugby in that town or city, so they are up for it beyond belief. We haven’t matched that so far. We don’t have that edge from last year, that fear factor because staff and players think we are a little bit better than we are.
Our president, Jacky Lorenzetti believes this is only the start. He wants to do a Toulon on it, with Bouclier after Bouclier, and European Cups thrown into the mix. This is daunting. Jacky has a vision, a spectacular one. Two weeks ago, he showed us what will be the key piece of the jigsaw. Players and management were invited to the site of the club’s future, Arena 92, on the western side of the city, the business district, as strategically located as it could possibly be. We sat down on temporary seating and looked around us in awe at the 40,000 domed stadium that will host the biggest music gigs in the world, and play host to Racing 92 from next September. Jacky plans to have the Rolling Stones and the All Blacks back to back on opening weekend. Jacky knows what he wants.
Arena 92 has the potential to redefine rugby but something is happening already in France. The gap in popularity between rugby and football in this country is closing by the month.
Of course, rugby here has its own idiosyncrasies and oddities. Where rugby clubs in Ireland are a hub in a community, here that doesn’t exist, not least in Paris. Cork Con has a clubhouse, a trophy cabinet and heartbeat where old club players and members congregate, celebrate and commiserate with each other, Racing has nothing like that. The club’s training facility at Le Plessis Robinson is populated by players, management and the Academy and the only history is last season and how we improve on it. It’s not being clever saying Munster have way more history in the European Cup than Racing have. It’s a fact.
In Brive last Saturday, we had enough ball to win two games, but lost again 25-16. Brive has the best kicker in world rugby, Gitain Germain, at full-back. Remember the name. Incredible. The value of an unbelievable kicker. I’d almost forgotten.
France still don’t have a dominant 10 and I don’t know whether Germain’s up to test rugby but he is unfairly punished for being an extraordinary goal kicker because everyone picks holes in the remainder of his game to compensate.
The Parisian derby and Sunday week’s Champions Cup match against Munster are big games in terms of getting our season back on track.
Europe presents a different stimulus, something different for the players.
It’s been hard coming down from the Camp Nou. We returned later than any other Top 14 club to pre-season under strict rest guidelines. We started on August 1 and played Toulouse four days later in pre-season. Our first competitive Top 14 fixtures was less than three weeks after that.
Hence, there’s no batch of grunt or shift of hard work banked to use when things get difficult. We’re building without foundation at the moment. But there’s a residue too of the nous gleaned from annexing the Top 14 in extraordinary circumstances — with 14 men for an hour against Toulon. I’m not certain you can put a currency on that.
There’s always been a bit of an X Factor with Racing. The last team to win the Bouclier 29 years ago wore pink dickie bows and drank champagne at half time in the final. A different era. But that kink wasn’t lost on our group, who conjured up an idea the day of the final in Barcelona that they would wear their club blazers on the pitch for the pre-game formalities. Maybe that spooked Toulon a bit. One thing it taught me again: Does it really matter what you do before kick-off as long as you’re locked and loaded from the first whistle? No it doesn’t.
You can’t but be moved walking out onto the Nou Camp. I visited the famous stadium church beforehand but forgot to pray to the gods of fate. Just 18 minutes into the final, Max Machenaud was red carded for a tip tackle on Matt Giteau. It’s very hard, unless you’ve been there, to articulate the blow that is to something you’ve worked every day for three years towards.
You’re trying to be emotionless, but every positive vibe is sapped from you because for two minutes you are in a haze. Not just this match out the window, but everything you have done before this.
Giteau, being the ultimate competitor, probably manipulated the tackle to look worse than it was, but psychologically it had an impact on him too in the game. I don’t think he was himself after. We should have been down to 13 afterwards. Bernard le Roux spear-tackled Toulon’s Juan Fernandez Lobbe, a far more blatant transgression than Machenaud, who at this point was in the dressing room with his head buried in his hands.
Fernandez Lobbe offloaded for a Toulon try and because of that fact, the incident wasn’t reviewed. 90 times out of 100, it’s another red card. We got lucky. They are the little breaks. With 13 players, good night, good luck Irene.
But it’s done with now, and we are all trying hard to move on. A new scrum coach, Patricio Noriega, started this week. He played with Argentina and Australia, and is the ex-Wallaby scrum coach. Fiji second row Leone Nakarawa will prove an incredible signing from Glasgow, believe me. Munster fans won’t need reminding: He was incredible against my old province in the Pro12 final two years ago.
Munster is nowhere on our radar til Monday morning. I mentioned this week the idea of someone going to the Aviva tomorrow, but I knew the score. It wouldn’t even come into their heads to spy in Dublin. That’s not a reflection on Munster, it’s the same if it was Saracens next week.
You have volumes of analysis files and angles around the pitch, behind the goals, side on, bird’s eye. The reality here is we have 40 players and three staff. We have enough to do to get our own game ready for Stade rather than heading off to Dublin. Anyway, the fact that I am here, there is big respect for Munster.
Either way, the chances of Racing getting blindsided by Rassie are slim enough…
