Toulouse ‘little boys’

TOULOUSE captain Fabien Pelous has bad news for Leinster — his side won’t roll over to Edinburgh in this weekend’s Heineken Cup clash. That, of course, means Leinster can do their best against Leicester Tigers at Welford Road and it still won’t make any difference to their hopes of qualification for the quarter-finals.

Last weekend, after losing 13-20 to Leinster at the RDS, the French second row lambasted his side whom he described as “little boys”.

He lauded Leinster but noted: “Very strong opposition, but I don’t want to speak about the Leinster team; I want to speak about the Toulouse team. Some players were like little boys, not big strong men.”

He went on to slam the team for the lack of spirit, saying: “I was particularly disappointed with the first-half display. We lost the game in those 40 minutes; didn’t play in that period and if you want to achieve something in this competition then you have to play for 80 minutes.”

Pelous admitted it was hard to persuade French players that they could win away games.

“Our French Championship has been a bit like that for 30 or 40 years, French teams accepting that they should win all their home games and that they might not win too many on the road. We have got to change that mentality and I thought we had changed it in Toulouse but not, obviously, last weekend,” he said.

But Pelous promised an angry response this weekend and contended that last week’s result was the best possible one to make his side re-focus. Edinburgh will suffer if he has his way — and so too will Leinster.”

“That type of performance will not be allowed to happen again, so I think we will not be so generous to Edinburgh,” he said.