Toulouse narrowly wins at home against Brive in Top 14
The match: 18-11
In Toulouse, the game is not everything: the players, also, by their qualities, allow a team to make the difference. In the absence of its best players put to rest after the international break, Stade Toulousain has been a shadow of itself. And the double champions of France are doing well with this meager success without trying, they who led until the hour mark on their field, and the first period was a long ordeal for the teammates of Maxime Médard.
Their territorial domination was sterile because of multiple errors near the Brivist in-goal. Weak in conquest, penalized on the ground, little inspired at sea, the Toulousans were unrecognizable. Relying on the precise boot (6/7) of their opener Thomas Ramos, they narrowly cope with Brivists who scored their only try of this match in the 39th by their back Joris Jurand at the end of the line following a great action born from a ball carried behind penaltouche, the only incursion of the Corréziens into the Toulouse camp in the first period.
In the lead at the break (3-11), the Brivists gave in a little to the disorderly offensives of Toulouse. Braced in front of their goal, the teammates of captain Matthieu Voisin conceded only three penalty goals (46th, 58th, 62nd). But found themselves at thirteen for four minutes after the yellow card to Tevita Ratuva (61st) and especially the very severe red card which sanctioned an involuntary kick of their opener on a player on the ground, Enzo Hervé wanting to hit the ball including a Toulouse player grabbed.
0
Stade Toulousain, top scorer in the Top 14, has not scored a single try against Brive, yet outnumbered in the 67th.
From then on, the Toulouse victory, until then short and ugly, was no longer in doubt. But, without panache, the French champions relied again and again on Thomas Ramos to widen the gap (75th, 15-11) before depriving the Corréziens of a deserved defensive bonus when their puma winger Axel Muller tried to – beyond regulation time a completely suicidal restart, concluded by a cruel sixth goal from Ramos (80 + 1e) …
The fact: Toulouse spoiled a lot
Twelve times, the Toulousains found themselves in the scoring zone without succeeding in triggering this domination, in particular between the 21st and the 29th, then between the 35th and the 40th, and finally between the 48th and the 55th. Technical approximations, bad choice, eleven balls lost in touch, penalized scrum, ground faults: the double champions of France were unable to find an offensive solution likely to allow them to score a try, failing to take the lead in the score per hour of play.