Le backlash
Like their coach Guy Novès, there is a certain aura about a glamour club who are perennial front runners in world rugby’s biggest club competition.
Even Declan Kidney was impressed by the shadow the giants of European rugby and Novès cast across Europe in the aftermath of bringing Munster to a second Heineken Cup triumph in Cardiff last May.
At one point during the post-match press conference, Kidney said he’d one day love to visit Stade Toulousain, spend a day with the club’s charismatic and successful coach, and generally immerse himself in the surroundings of one of European rugby’s most fashionable and decorated clubs.
Kidney’s respect for Novès runs deep, and while their paths have crossed several times on the fields of Europe over the last momentous decade of the Heineken Cup, what sets these men apart from other coaches is their almost umbilical connection to club or province.
Kidney, however, may have to put his visit to the south of France on hold. He lives in a different world now, promoted to the position of Ireland head coach, while Novès — scandalously ignored several times by the French Rugby Federation for a similar position with France— remains in this hotbed of French rugby fired by the same burning enthusiasm that has seen him mastermind seven French Championships and three European Cups since taking up the head coach’s position in 1993.
At the start of every season Noves demands that the club wins something, and usually the players don’t let him down. It’s a club that sets realistic targets and, more often than not, meets them. While the Top 14 remains a priority for the majority of French clubs, Stade Toulousain embraces the European Cup wholeheartedly — and it will be no different this year for Noves.
Toulouse set the standard for other French clubs in Europe, and in la Ville Rose there is a great sense of pride that year-in, year-out they set the benchmark for others. Interestingly, Toulouse (winners in 1996, 2003, 2005) and Brive (winners in 1997) are the only French clubs to have lifted the Heineken Cup since its inception at the beginning of the 1995/96 season. However, Toulouse have never had a lukewarm approach when the Heineken Cup comes around.
“It’s true it is something that we’re very, very proud of,” Noves’s assistant coach Phillipe Rouge-Thomas says of Toulouse’s European record and positive approach to the competition. “The thing that we’re most proud of is that we’ve managed to play and maintain high quality rugby and stay consistent in both competitions (Heineken Cup and Top 14). Other teams have peaks and troughs but we’ve never had that — that’s something which we’re very proud of.
“Having played with Toulouse, I’m extremely proud of our reputation in Europe, but you have to be very careful because pride comes before a fall.”
A week after Toulouse lost May’s final to Munster, they returned to domestic action and their standards, as Rouge-Thomas points out, didn’t drop. After securing their place in the play-offs, they responded to the disappointment of losing in Europe by winning the Top 14 and lifting the giant wooden shield, Le Bouclier de Brennus, after victory over Clermont Auvergne in the Stade de France.
There is an interesting passage from Trevor Brennan’s book Heart and Soul when David Gerrard, a former player with Stade Toulousain, explained to Brennan what winning the Le Bouclier means: “It’s a century of tradition and how since the early 1900s every single club in France and every single player sweated blood to win Le Bouclier. Many failed, and one name stood out for me in particular, the legendary Serge Blanco.” According to Brennan, it really is a mystical competition and one that sets the hairs standing at the back of his head.
Still, the French club championship brings its own cachet and, in many ways, hardens them for the tough away trips they must endure in the Heineken Cup, a point backed up the club’s star flanker, Jean Boulihou. “The Top 14 is our bread and butter, but the European Cup is so important to Stade Toulaisain and to the people of Toulouse. It’s tough to win but the experience of playing in other stadiums and in different atmospheres is what sets it apart from the Top 14. And why we embrace it as a team.
“The Heineken Cup is an elite competition, and it’s very hard to win, even get to the final. We love to play against other teams because it helps us improve. And for player to win the Heineken Cup it is club rugby’s highest honour.”
For Boulihou, the wounds from last May’s gut-wrenching loss to Munster haven’t fully closed, but he admits he didn’t have much time afterwards to dwell on the result in Cardiff: Top 14 was next on the club’s agenda, but as a day and as a experience, he’ll never forget the sea of red shirts that flowed around the Toulouse bus as it meandered its course to the Millennium Stadium.
“What impressed me was when we arrived at the stadium we saw a lot of Munster fans,” he recalls. “It wasn’t just the stadium where you felt the atmosphere, it was everywhere. Even when we were concentrating on the pitch, we could feel the atmosphere. When you play, you try forget everything because you are on the pitch to play. But the noise inside the ground was incredible. Unforgettable.”
Still, over the summer months, he admits he got a chance to think back to a day when Munster were just too streetwise, too good. “Details”, he feels, let them down on the day. “We lost, but afterwards we had a new challenge with the Top 14 — it was something very important for us.
“However, we knew we lost the game against Munster because of a few details. The problem is we knew the Munster pack is a very strong one; we knew they have so many top internationals and they got the better of us. We lost the final with a few details. We’ll keep this in mind for the new Heineken Cup season because it’s a trophy we’d like to claim again.”
Rouge-Thomas admits that even reaching last season’s final was a minor miracle in itself, given the long list of injuries they had to endure during that time. He does, however, acknowledge that in an indirect way, Munster played some part in helping them “get motivated again” to go on and win the Top 14 almost a month later.
“To have reached the (Heineken Cup) final with the enormous list of injuries that we had was, I think, a massive achievement,” says Rouge-Thomas. “Perhaps losing the final enabled us to go on to win the French championship.
“But there’s no more or no less motivation this season. We always want to win.”
Toulouse appear to be even better equipped to deal with injuries this season, particularly in the out-half position, which Jean Baptiste Ellisalde had to fill for much of last season. Freddie Michalak has returned from his one-year stint at Natal Sharks and David Skrela has made the move south from Stade Francais, while Benoit LeCouls has also become an important addition to their large squad.
With such a strong squad it allows Novès and Rouge-Thomas to rotate freely between both competitions, and they should be quite a force this season in a pool that includes Bath, Newport Gwent Dragons and Glasgow Warriors.
“It’s always very, very dangerous to talk about teams being weak or strong, and there are a lot of teams who have suffered because they’ve underestimated their opposition,” warns Rouge-Thomas. “We make a point of always respecting every team we play against. And it’s true this season that without having an open draw, the pools seem to be much more balanced, particularly in terms of the second runner up qualifying. Things will hopefully be more balanced than they’ve been in the past, but it’s still going to be a very tough pool to get out of.
“At the moment we do have quite a few injuries in the squad. Our aim is to get everybody in the entire squad to the same level physically, to get everybody in the same mentality, the right frame of mind.
“We will also lose 15 or so players during the international window which is a massive blow for us which is one of the reasons we run the squad the way we do.”
But Rouge-Thomas sounds an ominous note for any team with designs on the Heineken trophy.
“Should we be able to qualify from our pool, we think we’ve got a squad this year that will enable us to attack both the final of the Top 14 and the Heineken Cup with all the force Toulouse have to offer.”
Munster, beware of “le backlash”.
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