Top 14 talking points: To the wire on a record-breaking weekend
Late drama and four away wins. French rugby's Top 14 had it all in the round before the Champions and Challenge Cup semi-final weekend
Louis Carbonel for Stade Francais against Pau in the 83rd minute. Montpellier’s Domingo Miotti in the 80th to beat Bordeaux. La Rochelle’s Nolann Le Garrec to win it at Perpignan in the 79th. It was that sort of Top 14 weekend.
Three decisive penalties in the closing moments of three important matches that made Dylan Cretin’s 73rd-minute match-winning touchdown for Lyon, or Clermont’s Harry Plummer’s 71st-minute penalty against Toulouse seem humdrum in comparison — not that they were, for their own reasons.
Last weekend’s Top 14 was an attacking bonus festival, with six sides picking up an extra point for scoring at least three tries more than their opponents. This weekend was one for the losing bonus aficionado, with five of the seven matches decided by five points or fewer. The other two were attacking bonus blow-outs.
And, at the end of it all, only two sides, Pau and Racing 92, remain unbeaten at home.
So, on the weekend the Top 14 crashed through the 1,100-try mark for the first time — the total number of touchdowns at the end of the 22nd weekend was 1,120, an average of more than seven per match — let’s start, as usual, with the results.
Stade Francais 34 - 32 Pau
“Last season, we let matches slip away in the closing stages,” backrow Sekou Macalou told journalists a few minutes after Louis Carbonel’s 83rd-minute penalty had won a ur-playoff game against second-placed Pau at Stade Jean Bouin. “This year we know how to see matches through — we battle for every play, we fight for every point. This win in stoppage time proves that.”
READ ALSO: Carbonel shows he is still a class act
The difference between Stade Francais last season and Stade Francais this season is beyond stark. They finished last season 12th, one clear of the relegation risk zone, with 45 points from 10 wins. Saturday’s victory was their 12th this season, with four matches still to play. They have 63 points, including 13 bonus points — only Toulouse have more. And they’re fourth, with a serious shot at second, and its bye to the play-off semi-finals.
While Stade basks in the glow of a potentially crucial late-season victory, Pau will rue the most telling numbers in a match they mostly dominated. “For 77 minutes, we controlled the match quite well. But in the final minutes, we lacked a bit of energy,” Pau manager Sébastien Piqueronies said. “We played some good rugby, but still lacked precision. Our indiscipline cost us the win.”
That last sentence glosses over 15 penalties, two penalty tries conceded and four yellow cards — including two in the closing minutes to leave them defending their line against Stade’s waves of thunderous forward-heavy assaults. They eventually cracked.
Some managers would rail against their penalty count, but Piqueronies prefers the positive. And he has plenty to work with in the last four matches of the regular season as Pau seek a first play-off run since their return to the top-flight in 2015. “I’m very proud of my players,” he said. “They showed the level at which they want to play.”
The rest is detail.
Lyon 26 - 21 Castres
Parallels with the Stade Francais-Pau game are easy to draw in this match between two sides in the lower echelons of the table. As Pau lost despite controlling much of their match at Stade Francais, so Castres had the upper hand for much of their trip to Lyon and lost.
Despite conceding only seven penalties, a rare low, Castres also temporarily lost two players to yellow cards, and shipped two tries — including the decisive touchdown by Cretin – while Baptiste Delaporte was in the bin in the final quarter.
“It’s a very difficult defeat to swallow,” manager Xavier Sadourny said. “Lyon were efficient with what little ball they had, and we certainly weren’t good enough with the possession we had. It’s immensely frustrating.”
“We’re averaging between two and three yellow cards right now. We need to sort out our discipline. We’ll have to be resilient to bounce back.”
The thing is, Castres have the means to do this. Ex-referee Cedric Clave is on their staff. So you have to wonder how they can be so self-destructive.
As for Lyon, this was a victory of dispossessed rugby. As attack coach AB Zondagh said: “The half-time stats were worrying, with [Castres] enjoying 70 percent territory and 60 percent possession. We didn’t control the pitch or possession well enough — we struggled to get our game going.”
And then they did. At least, enough to get the four points and leave Castres’ pre-season top six-Champions Cup ambitions looking increasingly ragged and forlorn. Even top eight is looking a stretch now. But Sadourny has already set out his stall — he wants to challenge on two fronts. And, right now, Castres aren’t.
Lyon’s comeback was marred by a season-ending posterior cruciate ligament injury for international Mickael Guillard, who now faces a fitness race against time for July’s Nations’ Cup matches.
Toulon 52 - 26 Bayonne
In a stop-start season, and after a ragged and winless February and March on and off the pitch, April has been a Good Month (™) for Toulon.
First, they survived a tryline siege against Stormers and stunned Glasgow in the Champions Cup. Then, in the two-week Top 14 sprint between Champions Cup knockout games, they have picked up 10 points out of 10 with big wins over struggling sides Montauban and Bayonne to pull themselves back into the top-six conversation.
“It feels good to be back in contention [for the playoffs]," manager Pierre Mignoni said. “We’re behind, but we’re not finished. We know we still have a lot of work to do to get back on track.”
A quick start — Toulon were 12-0 up inside eight minutes — and three tries in the closing 11 minutes after Bayonne had closed the gap to seven points just before the hour were just what the Mayol crowd ordered as the Spring sun beat down on the Var.
Perfect preparation for their semi-final against Leinster next weekend in Dublin, then. Or almost. Losing protege centre Oliver Cowie to a serious rib injury and young backrow Mikheili Shioshvili to an ankle knock were twin blots on an otherwise near-perfect day – especially as they come on top of injuries to Gabin Villiere and Lewis Ludlam in recent weeks.
As the scoreline suggests, there wasn’t much for visitors Bayonne to celebrate. They had a few chances, but their porous defence simply let them down. Head coach Ged Fraser said afterwards: “When we got back to 12-12, and to 33-26 … we felt we could change the momentum . But we didn’t take our chances. We lacked ammunition, possession.
“We can’t question the players’ commitment. They were exemplary. However, we had some lapses. Our concentration isn’t up to the demands of the Top 14, especially away from home.”
And, finally, a note to quiz-setters: Bayonne’s Frederico Mori scored the 1,100th Top 14 try of the season in the 56th minute of this match. Here it is.
Montauban 10 - 59 Racing 92
The bad-season litany only gets worse for Montauban. Their single victory, against Perpignan on October 25, some 19 matches ago, was the last time they picked up any league points. They have conceded 155 tries — the most of any side in Top 14 history. They have leaked 1,075 points in 22 outings, or nearly 49 per match — and are on track to smash through Agen’s dismal 1,101 record long before the end of the campaign.
But manager Sebastien Tillous-Borde hasn’t abandoned all hope. “We still want to win a match at [Stade] Sapiac before the end of the season,” he said after watching his side lose big at home again. They are at home to both Stade Francais and La Rochelle in their remaining four matches.
Then a not-so-secret and entirely justified confession, even though Montauban could still mathematically avoid the automatic drop. “We’ve built a team for Pro D2 next season. A coherent recruitment strategy. We knew this year would be difficult. We want to finish strong.”
It’s hard to see how they could. Racing outpaced and outmuscled their hosts from the start. They had five tries in the bag by the 25th minute. But they were, coach Olivier Azam admitted, ‘messy’.
“We got off to a good start and took the five points, which was the objective,” he said. “We were a bit messy at times — we never really controlled the game. We were good in defence but less effective at the rucks.
“Montauban [were] very tenacious … their mindset, at this point in the season with their results, is remarkable. Even more so, I thought the fans were fantastic, pushing their team to the very end. It's great to see.”
Perpignan 29 - 31 La Rochelle
“These guys, this team, deserve to be in the Top 14,” Perpignan manager Laurent Labit insisted after La Rochelle’s Nolann Le Garrec — who scored 26 points on the day, to add to his 25 against Bordeaux the previous weekend — had kicked the winning penalty in the 79th minute of a momentum-shifting match at Stade Aime Giral.
Given Perpignan’s position in the table, and the fact they have won only five matches this season, that opinion is open to discussion. But it’s one Labit is almost contractually bound to make.
READ ALSO: Vannes, Montauban, Perpignan and French rugby’s play-off problem
Staff and players at the Catalan club are now openly planning for their 27th match of the season — a survival play-off against the losing ProD2 finalist.
It’s a match that they’re more likely to win because they can rotate players with it in mind, against a side still reeling from defeat in a final a week previously on the back of a 32- or 33-match domestic season.
“When I see the incredible atmosphere in the stadium again, I believe the Top 14 needs Perpignan. Everyone needs to be aware of that, everyone involved in French rugby,” Labit said.
“We played well, we played logically from the kick-off,” he added, of Saturday’s defeat. “Unfortunately, we were up against a team that was determined to win. And that's a very good thing because it prepares us perfectly for what lies ahead. On June 14 [the date of the promotion-relegation play-off], we will be under significant pressure.”
Labit’s opposite number, La Rochelle’s Ronan O’Gara, also referenced the atmosphere in his post-match comments to journalists, describing Aime Giral as a ‘hostile stadium’.
He, too, reckons theirs was a performance for the future — La Rochelle have an outside chance of making the Top 14 play-offs after picking up their fourth win in five outings. “[Our performance was] encouraging — we’re gaining momentum,” he said. “There was a lot of desire today. It was necessary because we didn’t control everything as we should have. But we’re rediscovering what made us strong.”
READ ALSO ‘It was a day for men’ - O’Gara hails La Rochelle character after gritty win in Perpignan
Bordeaux 21 - 23 Montpellier
Before this season kicked-off, Montpellier owner Mohed Altrad publicly declared his desire for a top-four finish. Manager Joan Caudullo set a more conservative top-six goal. With four rounds of the Top 14 to go, Montpellier are third, level on points with second-placed Pau, and looking forward to a Challenge Cup semi-final against Stade Francais’ conquerors Dragons.
It’s a match they head into on the back of a bruising Top 14 win over a near full-bore Bordeaux, a prime example of the manager’s ‘controlled violence’ rugby ethos. As Caudullo admitted: “It wasn’t pretty to watch, it’s not the prettiest rugby. But we managed to beat a great Bordeaux team. That’s exceptional.
“Toulouse and Bordeaux are a cut above. When they’re at 100 percent, they’re unplayable, but when you can bring them down to 90 or 80 percent, you have a chance. That’s what we managed to do.”
Their Top 14 run-in features games at home against Montauban and Pau, and trips to Castres and Lyon. Second — and a bye to the play-off semi-finals — is not out of the question.
Champions Cup holders Bordeaux, meanwhile, who host Bath at Stadium Atlantique as the defence of their title enters the last four, have some lessons in late-game management to learn. Manager Yannick Bru said: “It’s tragic that we couldn’t keep our cool when we were at 15 against 13 after taking the lead…
“I don’t want to single out individual players who have helped us win other matches. The reality is we just weren’t in the right frame of mind to stay composed."
He’s not wrong. In the final 73rd and 75 minutes at Chaban Delmas on Saturday night, the referee issued yellow cards to Montpellier duo Billy Vunipola and Mahamadou Diaby. Bordeaux’s Maxime Lamothe scored the 76th-minute try that gave Bordeaux a one-point lead with a two-player advantage. That should have been it. Take the restart, play it out.
But then Cameron Woki conceded a penalty, before Jefferson Poirot was shown a rare orange card for head contact, which gave the visitors’ rejuvenated Domingo Miotti a shot at goal on the hooter to win it. He nailed it.
Toulouse 24 - 27 Clermont
Eight minutes into the final match of the Top 14’s 22nd weekend, Toulouse had scored three unanswered converted tries. A quarter-of-an-hour later, Clermont’s Marcos Kremer was shown the weekend’s second orange card, and the visitors were down to 14 for 20 minutes. At the end of the opening half, Harry Plummer was sin-binned.
Yet, among all this, Clermont pulled themselves back to 21-14 at the break, en route to their first win in Toulouse since 2014, and in becoming the only side this season to take points back home from the Pink City.
“When Marcos left the field, we thought, ‘Either we keep staring each other down and get hammered in the end, or we put into practice what we talked about during the week’,” Clermont flanker Anthime Hemery told journalists afterwards.
“We chose the second option — stick together, never let up, in defence as well as in attack. And it worked, by doing simple but clean things. We were like a pack of dogs, especially in defense, plugging every gap.”
The shock result meant Clermont climbed to fifth in the table, but no one’s getting carried away just yet. Hemery recounted manager Christophe Urios’s post-match dressing room message: “Beating Toulouse at the Stadium was a huge achievement, but we have only won a match, not a title. And now we have to turn our attention to Perpignan, who will also be a tough opponent.”
For self-destructive Toulouse, there were no excuses: “Given the decisions we made and the energy we put in after fifteen minutes, we got what we deserved,” attack coach Clement Poitrenaud said.
And that was the 22nd Top 14 weekend of the season that was. Here are the next set of matches, which are on the weekend of May 9 and 10 — by which time we’ll know which, if any, French teams are in the Champions and Challenge Cup finals.
And here’s the table.
Coming up on Le Rugby: an interview with The Other Kpoku Brother, Jonathan, who plays for Nationale league high-flyers Albi, and a club-by-club Top 14 run-in breakdown.
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 French rugby column in The Rugby Paper every Sunday. I round-up Top 14, 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
