Top 14 – Toulouse, challenged in more ways than one this season
Despite a season that still promises to be busy for its internationals, with the World Cup in sight, Stade Toulouse wants to find the necessary resources internally and among the summer arrivals to set off again to attack a new coronation.
The 2021-2022 vintage of Stade Toulousain would have considered a clear success for many teams, with a semi-final in the Champions Cup and another in the Top 14. In this sense, the objective set at the start of the exercise had to elsewhere been respected: Be present in the last four of each competition to hope to win it. »
But it must however be admitted that, in the most successful club in France, which also came out of an absolutely historic double, this is not really likely to be enough. At least not for this Toulouse generation, fed with major successes since 2019 and which has largely brought French rugby back to the forefront of the planetary scene, in particular by offering itself a magnificent grand slam in 2022 with the ‘National team.
The problem? It is also that the club paid a high price for being the biggest provider of the XV of France. Struggling without its executives during duplicates which multiplied due to reports due to the Covid epidemic, the Toulouse stadium had to pull the rope of its Blues at the end of the course, which ended up on the kneecaps. At Leinster or against Castres in Nice. During the seminar organized for the staff at the end of June, Ugo Mola and his assistants embarked on a deep diagnosis to understand what had been missing.
With a fairly obvious idea in mind: avoid this pitfall again and set off again to attack a coronation as soon as possible. He cut a calendar that went crazy last year or international deadlines as handicaps, it’s obvious. But, to tell the truth, it promises to be of the same ilk in this very special season, which will last until a 2023 World Cup where everyone is waiting to see Dupont, Ntamack, Marchand, Baille, Cros, Jelonch and consorts awarded the Webb-Ellis Trophy.
President Didier Lacroix is aware of this: “ It won’t be a normal season but we don’t feel like we’re playing a single normal one (smile). What is normality? It is our ability to adapt. A virtue recognized in the rank of culture at Ernest-Wallon, on the ground and outside.
An ambitious recruitment behind
Didier Lacroix knows this better than anyone: his team will have to find new resources internally to add a little more to an already long track record next spring or summer. ” It will still be necessary to find some, on the management of the workforce, with the taking into account of the international periodshe confides. Each time Toulouse has been successful at the end of the season, it has been on doubles. »
In order not to pull once again on the rope of his Blues whose freshness will be essential during the knockout matches in the final straight, the staff must raise a little more in competence his promising youth, the Ainu ‘u, Cramont, Mallez, Brennan, Youyoutte, Page-Relo or Epée, while the Neti, Meafou, Placines or Tolofua definitively assume their status as leaders when the usual bosses are not there.
Also, Mola and his leaders had not waited for the diagnosis of the last off-season to identify a necessary need, that of bringing more speed to the three-quarter line. It’s done, with the reinforcements of Ange Capuozzo, Melvyn Jaminet, Arthur Retière, Paul Graou or Pierre-Louis Barassi.
” We went for a trendconfirms Lacroix. This recruitment seems to me quite judicious on our intentions of play and the rugby that we want to produce. I developed confidence in this group. “Because, if there is a constant in Toulouse, it is that of not denying oneself. ” We need to rediscover that little extra bit of soul that has characterized us since the dawn of time, especially in the seasons when we harvest laurels, concluded the president. This team is in osmosis with its generation, it has the power and the attractiveness to get everyone on board with it. » And everyone knows that when it’s on…