Volleyball: the Spacer’s of Toulouse start the play-down this Saturday so as not to go down to the second division, we explain to you
The Toulouse were aiming for the play-offs but at the end of a failed first phase they will ultimately only be entitled to the play-downs, where the objective will be to avoid the last place synonymous with Ligue B.
It is tonight, in Poitiers, that the Spacer’s will discover these famous play-downs, a new formula set up for the first time this season. For those who have not followed, we summarize: a mini-championship of ten games between the six teams ousted from the play-offs – from ninth to fourteenth place – and which each start with a nest egg of points corresponding to their classification at the end of the regular season. The last will be demoted to League B.
Twelfth, the Toulousains will thus attack this last straight line with six points while Plessis-Robinson (9th) has fifteen, Nantes (10th) twelve, Poitiers (11th) nine, Cambrai (13th) three and the Cannois, last, zero. These… latter have the profile of the perfect convict with this certain handicap combined with a calendar which has not given them a gift either: the outgoing French champion, who is definitely living a nightmarish season, will travel four times during the… four first days!
The fear of “weird scenarios”
“Cannes was 18 points behind the penultimate at the end of the regular season so they are not doing so badly, recalls Stéphane Sapinart, however. We do not really know how it can happen: We can imagine that the ninth escapes quite quickly and that he possibly drops matches at the end of the course. At the end of the competition it can change the situation with somewhat bizarre scenarios” is also wary of the Toulouse coach.
To avoid this kind of inconvenience, the Spacer’s, whose workforce will experience a profound upheaval at the end of the season, aim to save themselves as quickly as possible. “We will have to be able to fight everywhere to take as many points as possible, starting with Poitiers for us” announces Sapinart, whose men lost in Vienne (1-3) before taking their revenge at the Palais des sports (3-1) during the regular season. So as not to set yourself on fire from the start, offering this beautiful one does indeed look like a very good idea.