Top 14 talking points: All about Bordeaux and Montpellier
How French Champions and Challenge Cup finalists Bordeaux and Montpellier fared the weekend before their title matches against Leinster and Ulster in Bilbao … along with the other 12 sides in the Top 14
This is no ordinary week in northern hemisphere club rugby. This is Champions and Challenge Cup final week...
The usual order for Le Rugby’s weekly club-by-club Top 14 talking points is the fixture list according to the league’s official website, which – understandably – comes in scheduled time order.
But this is no ordinary week in club rugby in the northern hemisphere. This week is the one leading up to the Champions and Challenge Cup finals in Bilbao, in which two Top 14 teams face two URC teams. Or two French professional men’s outfits take on two Irish professional men’s outfits – however you want to dice it.
After that, time order has stuck. So, Challenge Cup finalists Montpellier’s last Top 14 match before Bilbao gets first mention, then the one involving Champions Cup holders Bordeaux – who defend their title on Saturday. And, then, it’s Top 14 weekend time order. You get the idea.
Anyway, let’s start with the big results graphic.
Castres 33 - 36 Montpellier
Nineteen wins in their last 22 matches in all competitions. That’s how well Ulster’s Challenge Cup final opponents Montpellier have played this season.
It has not been pretty – manager Joan Caudullo makes no apologies for his heavy reliance on the blunt instrument of a grit and steel pack and a hermetic defence built by in-demand coach Geoffrey Doumayrou, whose name is mentioned in future France dispatches — and the 2022 Top 14 champions are unlikely to score heavily in a French rugby popularity contest.
But leagues – and cups – are won on results. And Montpellier’s set piece oomph is easy to identify but harder to handle. Their discipline – just 13 yellow cards in 24 Top 14 matches this season, compared to 25 for their hosts on Saturday – is the second-best in the league. Which brings us back to 19 in 22. Or, taking in the entire season, 22 wins in 31. Hard to believe, now, Montpellier lost two and drew one of their opening four.
“We have a kind of [Top 14] play-off in two weeks against Pau,” Caudullo said after his side had hung tough to hold off the second of Castres’ two fightbacks to bring four domestic points home from Stade Pierre Fabre. “That could help us to clinch second place. We know that Stade Français took five points against Montauban, so the battle is on. We know the script: we have to win.”
After a ninth-place finish last time out, Montpellier’s stated target before the season kicked off was top six, if you listened to Caudullo at the start of his second campaign in charge, or top four if club president Mohed Altrad had his way.
Right now, they’re beating either expectation – they’re second, with Pau at home and Lyon away on their Top 14 calendar.
The Challenge Cup wasn’t really in their reckoning. But, now they’re heading to Friday’s final, they’ll be ready.
“This week, we were focused on the Top 14,” Caudullo said — Bordeaux could perhaps learn something, there. “The Challenge Cup wasn’t a goal at the start of the season … But starting Monday, we’re going to switch our focus completely and give it our all.”
So far this season, Montpellier have been under-the-radar good. The sort of good that involves a double take when you see just where they are in the table, followed by a grunt of recognition as you recall that, yes, they keep winning matches.
Bilbao under Friday night lights could change that.
Bordeaux 37 - 32 Perpignan
Bad dress rehearsals are, according to theatrical legend and practice, the precursor of and catalyst for an opening night triumph for the ages. After Saturday’s Top 14 outing, Champions Cup holders Bordeaux desperately want to believe in the sporting version in the days leading up to the defence of their title in Bilbao on Saturday.
As Midi Olympique put it, Bordeaux, “started poorly, barely improved, and ultimately botched the ending,” against Perpignan at Stade Chaban Delmas.
The win, the four vital late-season league points, the move up to fifth in the table, ahead of Clermont – who they host on the final weekend of the season – count for nothing compared to the nature of the performance, a week ahead of the defence of their Champions Cup crown against Leinster.
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Defence coach Christophe Laussucq summed up the mood afterwards. “We were worried the guys might have their minds elsewhere,” he said, “but not to this extent. We were close to being ridiculous for a good half.”
As it was in Bayonne a week earlier, so it was against Perpignan on Saturday, as a partially rotated Bordeaux – their precarious hold on a top-six play-off place prevents Yannick Bru from resting more than a handful of players at a time – again needed urgent help from the bench from their internationals.
Bru had clearly hoped to give most of Marko Gazzotti, Gaetan Barlot, Maxime Lucu, Yoram Moefana and Louis Bielle-Biarrey an easier afternoon, with perhaps a 20-minute run-out late in the game. But he was forced to call on their services at halftime, with his side struggling at 26-19 down.
Bielle-Biarrey scored two, made one and saved his side’s skin with a vital intervention to prevent Perpignan flier Jefferson-Lee Joseph levelling the scores with the clock in the red. He was later filmed limping out of Chaban Delmas, raising questions about his fitness for the Champions Cup final.
Word out of camp is that the staff aren’t relaxed about his fitness. But the images were enough to spark concern among fans.
“It’s unfortunate we always have to field the same players to get a decent performance,” Laussucq said, in an admission that Bordeaux’s squad depth isn’t as solid as their two-front ambitions perhaps need them to be. “We’re too reliant on certain guys, which is a bit worrying.
“We were dreading this match. We had talked about it: we were afraid that, mentally, not everyone would be 100 percent focused, that we wouldn't necessarily respect Perpignan enough.
“There’s a big match in a week. Nobody had marked Perpignan as a priority.
“I’m not worried, though; we bounced back against Bath and Toulouse. We have a historic match ahead of us. All the players are focused on it.”
So, for the past fortnight, Bordeaux have been suffering with the sporting version of Dress Rehearsal Syndrome. Got it.
Pau 24 - 19 Clermont
Home advantage in the barrage round of the play-offs. That’s all Pau boss Sebastien Piqueronies wants for the end of the Top 14 season. It’s a sensible wish. Second is possible, very much so, but depends on factors outside his control.
For a few hours this weekend, thanks to wins over Clermont, Castres and Montauban respectively, Pau – along with leaders Toulouse, second-placed Montpellier and fourth-placed Stade Francais – had one hand on a ticket to the Top 14’s play-off phase. Then Racing 92 beat Toulon in Saturday evening’s primetime match at La Defense Arena, and shook all but Toulouse’s pass out of their collective grasp.
“Did you all stick around until the end of the match?” Piqueronies joked with the journalists at Stade du Hameau after the crazy conclusion of their match against Clermont. “Did you enjoy it?”
“I obviously was suffering from a lack of clarity and control. But I remain very proud to be part of a team that, when it gets into a tight spot, believes strongly in itself, stays resilient, and keeps believing.”
He was referring to the long final minutes of a game that went much further beyond the 80 than it should, after Theo Attissogbe’s late, late try, and after the otherwise excellent Jack Maddocks had mistimed what should have been the last kick to touch and gave Clermont one final shot at victory with a lineout 5m or so from the hosts’ line.
But the throw-in wasn’t straight, handing possession back to Pau. They opted for a scrum restart. Unfortunately, Dan Robson’s intended pass to Axel Desperes in the in-goal area wasn’t straight either, and went directly out of play. In the face of concerted Clermont appeals, the referee ruled it was an attempted pass that went astray, rather than a deliberate attempt to throw the ball dead.
“We need to manage the clock better. Dan could have waited a second longer to make the pass. We could have run a bit more and taken eight or 10 extra strides. It was more of a collective issue in a high-pressure situation,” Piqueronies said.
Opposition manager Christophe Urios, meanwhile, couldn’t resist a slight dig at the officials. “I didn’t understand [it],” he said. “But I won’t dwell on it. I would have preferred we won the ball in the lineout just before. That’s it. I didn’t even discuss it with the players – it doesn't seem to me to be the most important event of the match.
“We’re used to it with [referee] Pierre Brousset. With him, we don’t always understand everything.”
He went on: “We got a bonus point. That’s the most important thing. We absolutely couldn’t leave empty-handed, because qualification will once again come down to a single point.”
Lyon 42 - 35 Bayonne
Proof at Stade Gerland, if it was needed, that a hatful of tries – 11 in all – and a whirling scoreboard don’t automatically correspond to a high-quality game. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t wildly entertaining. It was, as error-strewn matches sometimes are.
It was spectacular. It wasn’t great. There’s a difference. It was a big, dumb, summer blockbuster movie of an end-of-season match between two teams with precisely nothing to play for except pride. A lot of sound. A lot of fury. Ultimately nothing significant. Fun, but utterly forgettable.
A lot of what was worth watching heavily involved Jiuta Wainiqolo. He scored his 18th try of the season in the first half, was denied his 19th after a 50m sprint following a TMO playback in the second, and stopped Bayonne hooker Andy Bordelai in his tracks with the tryline begging.
“We expected an open match like this,” Bayonne’s kicking coach Camille Lopez said. “There was nothing at stake, let’s be clear. We lacked efficiency [but] we created a lot of opportunities.
“The difference between Lyon and us was clinical finishing. They scored on every chance they had. We often get into the 22, but fail to capitalise.
“Of course, there’s no real stake anymore, but we had the opportunity to move up a place in the standings. We’ll take away some positives, but we can’t be satisfied conceding 40 points every weekend. The season has been tough, both physically and mentally, but we’re not going to make excuses.”
Lyon’s Julien Puricelli wasn’t satisfied, either. “I’ll take the four points because we didn’t have possession, with a messy scrum and poorly executed exits from our own half in the first half.
“Our players, our leaders, need to be aware of the importance of territory, especially when we have little possession. Fortunately, we were effective on turnovers and counter-attacks.”
Montauban 25 - 73 Stade Francais
In 24 Top 14 matches this season, Montauban have leaked 50 points or more 11 times. On three further occasions, they have conceded 49 points. In eight matches since February, the lowest total racked up by their opponents has been 47.
The 73 visitors Stade Francais scored isn’t even the highest scoreline they’ve been on the wrong side of. Connacht managed 75 in the Challenge Cup in December, and Clermont scored 84 at Stade Marcel Michelin in October.
Montauban’s current average in the red column is a shade over 50.
“The difference is physical,” long-suffering captain Fred Quercy said after this latest hammering. “Our opponents are bigger, stronger, and move around more. You’re always a little bit behind, and that fraction of a second at the 10th phase makes it seem they have three more players. You get more tired, you’re chasing after guys and you can’t take it anymore. After a while, you lose track.
“You invest yourself, you work all year, you get banged up and nothing happens… In the long run, it’s exhausting.”
Even so, and despite a historically bad season – the 1,207 match points they have conceded in a single season is by some distance the worst ever, and Montauban still have matches against La Rochelle and Pau to come – Quercy wouldn’t opt out of this campaign for one back in the second tier.
“I spent 12 years in Pro D2,” he said. “I’d rather play La Rochelle or Stade Francais than any Pro D2 team. We're paid to play here, and I wouldn’t trade places with anyone.”
It’s been hell. But, for Montauban, it may have been worth it.
Racing 92 43 - 28 Toulon
Nothing much changed for Racing 92 at the weekend. They were seventh in the Top 14 with 61 points when Saturday dawned. And they were seventh in the Top 14 with 65 points at midnight. But manager Patrice Collazo was happy enough with that because it meant they were still firmly in the hunt for a top-six finish, and had closed the gap on sixth-placed Clermont – who they face next – to two points.
“I quickly realised, watching the afternoon matches, that four or five points tonight [Saturday] wouldn’t change the standings,” he said. “We’re still in a three-way battle with Bordeaux and Clermont. If things are going to change, it will be in two weeks.
“I asked the guys to focus on that match in Clermont, to stay focused. The unseen work during these two weeks can make the difference. That means recovering well and doing the work that needs to be done.”
There’s plenty of it, he said, after the win over Toulon that definitively ended the visitors’ faint hopes of reaching the play-offs.
“We were much more active, more aggressive in the collisions than last weekend against La Rochelle. But we lacked the collective cohesion to deliver a truly polished performance.”
Despite the defeat, Toulon manager Pierre Mignoni refused to be too hard on his rotated team. “We showed a lot of courage, but we made too many mistakes, gave up too many penalties, and were too clumsy.
“We lacked the final pass and clinical finishing, but overall, this team dared to play rugby,” he said.
“Let’s not forget that the lineup against Racing was young — very young. They’re learning, fighting, and improving, and that bodes well. Without making excuses, we also had a lot of players out on Saturday night, including 11 injured forwards.”
La Rochelle 38 - 10 Toulouse
A lot of English articles on this match will focus on La Rochelle’s late-season play-off dash. Which is a shame because, arguably, a grumpy Ugo Mola is more interesting.
Still, if you want to read what ROG said, click the link just here.
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We’re going with grumpy Ugo…
A record 124 tries and 922 points don’t count for much if you’re Toulouse manager Mola and you’ve just watched your side on the wrong side of a shellacking at Stade Marcel Deflandre.
“This will be brief,” he told journalists in the press room. “I thought I saw a team that was going to play an important game next weekend, when in fact we’re on vacation. So it was a bit of a shame to see this level of commitment.”
This match was their second-worst defeat of the season, overshadowed in points-difference terms only by their 44-14 loss at Montpellier on September 20.
“Losing upsets me every time,” Mola said. “Putting in a performance like tonight upsets me every time.
“We knew our end-of-season stretch would be tough, with away games at Castres, La Rochelle, Toulon, and Racing. And with two home games, we shot ourselves in the foot a bit with our loss to Clermont. We knew the points we’d picked up early on would give us some breathing room.
“The problem is, we don’t have that breathing room, anymore. We have to beat Lyon to be sure we finish in the top two.”
He’s overstated the scale of Toulouse’s current consistency problem somewhat. They’re still eight points ahead of second-placed Montpellier, and nine clear of Pau. It would be extreme for them to drop out of the top two spots, with their direct semi-final pass.
“I’m not going to complain about the eight-point lead,” he said. “Everything we’ve done since the start of the season has put us in this situation. With a little more intensity and focus, we might have qualified even sooner.”
This is the Toulouse way. No let-up.
And that’s the Top 14 weekend that was. Here, for the record is the table.
Toulouse are already assured of a place in the play-off – their goal now is top two. Montpellier, Pau and Stade Francais are as close to certain of post-season action as it’s possible to get without actually being there, while Bordeaux, Clermont, Racing 92 and La Rochelle have rapidly decreasing chances of making it, too.
Toulon still have an outside shot of finishing in the top eight and bagging an invitation to next season’s Champions Cup party, but that window is closing rapidly, while Lyon, Castres and Bayonne have nothing left to play for and two matches to do it in.
Montauban are down and breaking unwanted records every week, and Perpignan are focusing entirely on their 27th match of the domestic campaign, against the losing ProD2 finalist – which will be one of Vannes, Colomiers, Provence, Oyonnax, Valence Romans or Brive.
Looking for insightful French rugby content from someone who really knows the state of the game? My name is James Harrington. I’m a France-based freelance sports journalist, and I write mostly about French club and international rugby.
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You can read my weekly column on French rugby in The Rugby Paper every Sunday. I round-up Top 14, Elite 1, Champions and Challenge Cup and international action for the Irish Examiner, as well as for Rugbypass. I have also done bits for Rugby World, and cover the HSBC SVNS for svns.com
