How Did I Lose Again in Battle
Top 14: Toulouse lose again while Toulon fight sinking feeling
Date published: February 21 2022 - Lawrence Nolan
It's six defeats in a row for Toulouse in the Top 14, whose early season momentum has completely evaporated after a 27-22 humbling at the hands of a very average Pau side.
The only bright spark for the Toulousains was the inability of the rest of the top of the table to capitalise; of the top six teams only Castres and Racing 92 won at the weekend, while Montpellier drew at Brive.
Against thirteen men
But while Union Bordeaux Begles were at least losing narrowly to sixth-placed Racing and Lyon's defeat was to Castres, Toulouse were at one point 27-3 down against a team which had already lost one player to a red card and was to lose one more to a second red in as heated a match, in front of as raucous a crowd, as you could imagine.
It was 3-3 after a fairly cagey opening quarter, but Steven Cummins put Pau in the lead with a close range try after a quick penalty by a fellow forward.
That was backed up ten minutes later by another goal-line plunge from Tumua Manu, although the back-line move two phases before that had brought the Bearnaise team to the line was sumptuous, featuring a well-disguised miss-pass and a peach of an offload before the slightly-built Elloit Roudil bumped off two would-be tacklers.
Centre Manu was then the first to be red-carded for a poorly-executed tackle, but it did little to stop Pau's momentum initially, with Roudil galloping in for the third try, and a 27-3 lead, at the end of a move remarkably similar to the one which had brought the second score.
Manu's centre partner Jale Vatubua was the second to be red-carded after 51 minutes for a piece of physicality remarkably similar to the one that did for Manu – so would this then be the heralding moment for another Pau try?
Belatedly, Toulouse did rally, with three tries in ten minutes. Dimitri Delibes got the first two, the second of which was scored while a significant scrap was taking place some 50 metres behind play as the game threatened to spiral out of control of everyone. Matthis Lebel got a third, and at 27-22 with a good 17 minutes to go, you'd have backed Toulouse to run away with it.
But the home side dug in, aided by some borderline physicality and the sheer will of the home fans, quite a few of whom stormed the pitch at the final whistle.
"You have to look at yourself in a mirror, see what you are doing well and not well," said Thomas Ramos when asked to explain the run of defeats.
"But also see what we do less. Maybe we are doing a little less. Meanwhile, others do more and pass us by."
One of those passing Toulouse by was Racing 92, who won a miserable game 16-13 in Bordeaux with a last-minute penalty from Ben Volavola. Juan Imhoff scored Racing's try, a couple of days after extending his tenure in Paris for two more years.
Castres won an equally uninspiring game between two who have already passed Toulouse by, beating Lyon 19-17 courtesy of a late penalty from the steel-nerved Benjamin Urdapilleta, whose place in Castres folklore alongside Rory Kockott's is complete.
Montpellier's draw with Brive was equally uninspiring, with Italy fly-half Paolo Garbisi hitting the post with the last kick of the game, a conversion of Jan Serfontein's try. Montpellier's emotion at only drawing rather than winning was obvious in Fulgence Ouedraogo's defence of Garbisi: "I told him: "Don't worry, you'll score. It wasn't you who made the team lose," seemingly oblivious to the actual outcome of the game.
Brive's two points won there might be critical though. Toulon won their relegation eight-pointer at home to Perpignan with unexpected ease, tearing into a 24-6 lead early in the second half before Perpignan rallied to keep the score respectable, at 29-18.
There was little respectable about Biarritz's capitulation to an admittedly on fire Stade Francais team, who ran in ten tries in a 65-19 humiliation of the league's bottom team.
It's been well-reported in these columns about the ongoing turmoil surrounding the club, but the effervescent club President Jean-Baptiste Aldigé sounded somewhat beaten for the first time in the wake of the game.
"We are not in a good place," he said.
"We are out of breath, at the end of the cycle after three years of continuous efforts. I have no players to reproach. No one let us down. No one has betrayed this club.
"It's just that the dynamics are running out a bit. We can only exist on the desire to win, this desire based on incredible types and in which no one believed except us. We are in great difficulty, we are melting down, that's the truth."
Whatever else they are, they are now bottom, with Perpignan above them, and seemingly doomed. Toulon are now above Perpignan and with a game in hand, but both are, strangely, within sight of Clermont in tenth, who lost 31-27 at La Rochelle.
Clermont have a points difference of +5, despite having won seven and lost ten games, which says a lot about the nature of many of their defeats. This one however, was given cosmetic surgery with two tries in the last two minutes. Otherwise, they were well-beaten.
Source: https://www.planetrugby.com/t14-toulouse-lose-again-while-toulon-fight-sinking-feeling
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