Top 14 Drilldown: Rog turns back the clock, depleted Toulouse show character

All the talking points from the French rugby weekend
Top 14 Drilldown: Rog turns back the clock, depleted Toulouse show character

Toulouse's French flanker Antoine Miquel (L) fights for the ball with Perpignan's Argentinian fly-half Patricio Fernandez (R) during the French Top14 rugby union match between Stade Toulousain Rugby (Toulouse) and US Arlequins Perpignan at the Ernest-Wallon stadium in Toulouse, south-western France on November 6, 2021.  Photo by RAYMOND ROIG/AFP via Getty Images 

Mon, 08 Nov, 2021 - 11:15
James Harrington

The Top 14 international break starts here, 10 unrelenting weeks after the season kicked off on September 4.

Those players not involved in the November international series have a few well-earned days off - but there’s plenty of work in store when they head back to the training ground for a few sides.

In the unlikely scenario that he didn’t know already, Franck Azema saw the scale of the job in front of him as an enthusiastic but directionally challenged Toulon lost at Clermont on Sunday; while a toothless Racing were defended off the park at Brive, Lyon just-about dealt with comeback Castres, and a depleted Toulouse took a hard road to victory over Perpignan.

Here are the results from the weekend’s seven matches, which featured 30 tries and 11 yellow cards in a season that has not yet quite managed to get going.

 

And here’s the table as the season careers towards the midway point. It’s tough at the top, tough at the bottom, but it’s hard enough to create diamonds in an extended middle, with a bonus-point win separating Montpellier, in third, and Brive, in 10th.

 

La Rochelle turn back time 

It wasn’t so much the scale of La Rochelle’s 26-3 win over Bordeaux on Friday night - who headed into the 10th game of the season unbeaten since the first - as the style.

In front of a 60th full house in a row at Stade Marcel Deflandre, Ronan O’Gara’s side rolled back the clock to last May, when - led by their forwards - denied Leinster a sniff of their tryline for more than an hour; or last June, when it was their defence, rather than the rather catchier KBA, that destroyed Racing 92’s Top 14 title dreams in the last four.

No wonder O’Gara wanted to congratulate his forwards as a unit: “They were huge,” he said. It was the truth.

 

But it wasn’t the whole of the truth. “I have already told the players that it was a good response [to last week’s loss at Perpignan], but the time for reactions is over,” O’Gara said.

“I think we're playing too much at the moment, but it's good, I prefer that. When we have put all the ingredients together, we will be a good team.” 

Bordeaux’s Christophe Urios, who watched helplessly from the sidelines as his side’s chances of a seventh win in a row evaporated before his eyes. “A big stop,” he called the result.

 

“At no time did I feel that we had the upper hand on La Rochelle. No time in any area. We did not exist in scrum, in the ground game. I'm not even talking about the kicking game…” 

That was the truth - and the whole of the truth.

Basta makes mark for 70% Lyon 

"We are at 70 percent of what we can do," Lyon coach Pierre Mignoni said after watching his side end a six-match losing streak against Castres Olympique at a Stade Gerland bathed in late-autumn sun.

 

Lyon welcomed the return of Mathieu Bastareaud to the back of the scrum after 10 months out with injury, as they looked to bounce back from two losses in a row, while young France centre Pierre-Louis Barassi also returned after several weeks’ absence with an ankle injury.

They also had a hooker at tighthead, a trio of eights in the backrow, and a second row that, for all its talents, rarely works as a unit.

Bastareaud made his presence felt immediately, winning the first breakdown. And he was just as busy at the end of the match - winning a crucial turnover as the visitors looked for an unlikely comeback score.

 

But the fact that Castres got as near as they did - the match ended 30-23, when Lyon were 27-6 up early in the second-half, and the visitors had their chances to get closer and even steal it - is a concern Mignoni will be pleased he has two weeks to solve before the Top 14 resumes.

“We had a very good first half, when we were in total control and then we had this black hole, once again,” Mignoni said. “Our indiscipline revived [Castres] and we started to struggle. We gave up three penalties in the first half, nine in the second.

 

“We lost the initiative, we made mistakes on the ground, we are not good with comebacks and we nearly paid for it.” 

Joseph blooms under ‘player whisperer’ coach 

France under-20s prodigy Jordan Joseph struggled to force his way into Racing 92’s starting line-up, so he headed to Pau earlier this season on loan in search of gametime.

After coming off the bench for his first two outings under Pau’s new head coach and young player whisperer Sebastien Piqueronies, Joseph started for the first time on Saturday - and put in a try-scoring XXXL performance that his potential has promised for so long, winning Midi Olympique’s Oscar for performance of the week.

 

His 61st-minute try marked the start of a dramatic comeback for the hosts, who had fallen 21-12 behind to opponents Biarritz in a back-and-forth encounter at Stade du Hameau.

 

It was the first of three tries in the closing 19 minutes that ended when Antoine Hastoy, who’s heading to La Rochelle at the end of the season, scored the try that completed a personal points full-house for the game.

 

The win moved Pau to eighth in the table, eight points clear of the bottom two places, while rooting the visitors to the bottom of the league heading into the two-week international break.

Stade Francais’ unwanted double 

Stade Francais ended their first block of Top 14 games with a rare unwanted double - a try-scoring bonus for notching three more tries than opponents Montpellier at Stade Jean Bouin; and a losing bonus for finishing the game within five points of the visitors.

Annoyingly for Gonzalo Quesada, and as scrum-half Arthur Coville articulated afterwards: “We didn’t lose the match against Montpellier, we lost the match against ourselves. It's the first time I've lost a match with the offensive bonus and I think that sums up [our performance]. In attack, we weren’t bad, but in defence …”.

 

He didn’t need to say any more. It’s a season-long problem for Stade. Once again, they gave up points too easily - all Montpellier had to do was work up three phases in the hosts’ half, and they won a penalty - which they used effectively.

Seven penalties had kept them in the game until Julien Tisseron scored their only try of the game in the 67th minute. France reject Anthony Bouthier then killed the game with a drop goal 10 minutes from time.

 

“We have two weeks to properly analyse and move forward, but we know that it is not easy,” Coville admitted, with Stade slipping to a second loss in a week. “We know about difficult times at Stade Francais. We will tighten up, we will stay welded as a unit and then we will try to start again.” 

Depleted Toulouse work up bonus-point win 

The answer to the question, ‘can Toulouse deal with the absence of a dozen key players during the international window?’, it turns out, is, ‘Yes, but it’s not that simple’.

Toulouse’s early season charge was, in part, dictated by the need to cope with these periods when France coach Fabien Galthie has raided the playing stocks for the national side. Points in the bag, and all that… The defending champions now have 36 of them, with eight wins from 10 and sit at the top of the table heading into the break.

 

Back when the Top 14 fixture list for the season was revealed Ugo Mola would have been happy enough to see Toulouse’s programme this November featured home matches against Perpignan and Brive.

 

He would have been less happy as halftime approached and the hosts were 15-8 down against the Catalans. Then Selevasio Tolofua blunderbussed over, and the hosts went in level.

 

“That try before halftime was good for us,” centre Sofiane Guitoune admitted afterwards. “It showed the strength of character of the team. We went back to the changing room at 15-15 and it became a new game. We knew what was wrong, we just had to correct it.”

 

He added: “Perpignan were efficient and dangerous, especially on the counter-attack. At halftime, we decided we had to hold the ball and be more patient.” 

So they did. And they hammered the second half 22-0 to win 37-15 - Arthur Bonneval scoring the bonus-point try in the final minute of the game. This wasn’t vintage Mola’s Babes’ stuff. It was a fair working impression of it - and good enough to beat Perpignan.

Nolan down as Racing slip 

Racing 92’s ridiculously talented teenage scrum-half Nolan Le Garrec - namechecked last week as a near-future France call-up by national squad attack coach Laurent Labit - could be out for some time with a shoulder injury picked up in the 12-10 loss at Brive.

 

Lock Bernard Le Roux, playing after being released by France earlier in the week, was not recalled to France’s spartan Marcatraz rugby headquarters ahead of the match against Georgia in Bordeaux next Sunday after picking up a muscle tear in his thigh.

Injuries and call-ups were not the limits of the problems Racing faced at Brive on Saturday.

Even without several key players, they were still able to call on a core squad featuring Le Garrec, Teddy Thomas, Juan Imhoff, Henry Chavancy, Ibrahim Diallo, Antoine Gibert, Yoan Tanga Mangene and Hassane Kolingar.

 

And yet that side, for all its talents, was kept scoreless by ferocious and determined Brive - themselves missing 19 players to injury or international selection - for more than an hour. Imagine, if you can, a more successful and disciplined Argentina against France on Saturday night and you won’t be far wrong.

So Brive head into the two-week international break having ended a four-match losing streak, while Racing - despite being fifth in the table - suddenly have more questions than answers.

 

Azema came, Azema saw … Azema needs time 

Midway through last week, three or four days into Franck Azema’s first week as Toulon manager, the hotseat still warm from when Patrice Collazo was sitting in it, club president Bernard Lemaitre said he had already noticed an improvement in attitudes and stress levels in the run-up to the Var side’s trip to the new manager’s former club Clermont.

 

Azema is rather more tactful than his boss, and steered clear of any questions about his former employers, simply stating that he was looking forward to the final match of the final Top 14 weekend before the two-week international break.

After the match, having seen the scale of the job at hand, he’ll be glad of the extra time he has before Toulon’s next match, at home against Lyon on November 27.

Clermont were far from great on Sunday. And they still managed a bonus-point 31-16 win because Toulon were worse. Willing, but unable.

 

They were clumsy in admittedly unfavourable weather, and though it’s impossible to fault their enthusiasm, they were undisciplined - conceding 13 penalties in the first half alone, and were perhaps lucky not to have three players in the sin-bin at the same time.

Azema has already indicated that the first move is backwards - to the basics - as it routinely is when a new manager takes over during a campaign with a team that’s not his, and a staff already in place.

 

“I put the emphasis on the basics and the simple things,” he said. “We must do them together. You have to master the things you can and do it in a united way … This is what will be important.

The one thing for Toulon fans to hang on to - they didn’t give up. That’s something Azema can work with.

“There will be no miracle,” he warned. “It’s a team that was in place and we have to see how to improve small details. I know that not everything is going to happen in two days - it would be arrogant to believe it would.”

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