Top 14. Before La Rochelle – Toulouse. “You have to be ultra-efficient”, predicts Jean Bouilhou
Completely. Since I have been training in Toulouse, La Rochelle has always been – just like us – THE benchmark. They’re a really powerful team up front. We are paying more attention to preparing for this match. If you don’t add all the ingredients you need…
Completely. Since I have been training in Toulouse, La Rochelle has always been – just like us – THE benchmark. They’re a really powerful team up front. We are paying more attention to preparing for this match. If we do not put all the necessary ingredients in addition to aggressiveness, if we are not very precise in the preparation of the match, it is an opponent who can roll over us. So yes, that has never happened until now. But that’s because each time, we prepared well. It’s a real challenge to play these Rochelais.
Stade Rochelais has the highest percentage of possession and is particularly efficient in the ruck areas. Should we be resilient against such an adversary?
Above all, you have to be efficient. Indeed, it is a team that does not give you the ball. So the rare times we have it, you have to know how to break quickly. And quickly convert into points because they leave little space for the opposing attack. You have to be super efficient.
The Stade Toulousain remains on a series of 8 victories against the Rochelais. Does it matter to you?
Let’s say that the longer the invincibility lasts, the closer we get to the first defeat. It’s statistical. It is important in the sense that, in the past, every time we put all the ingredients to beat this team, we managed to do it. We don’t know how it will go, there will be rotations. But it is sure that this series of victories, for the players of Toulouse, it is a source of pride. In the same way as when they beat Munster three times in a row. It’s one of the things they’ll keep.
This week, Antoine Dupont, Julien Marchand and Anthony Jelonch are on vacation. The one before, it was the turn of Romain Ntamack, Peato Mauvaka and Mathis Lebel. Is this period complicated to negotiate?
It’s a bit the result of the lessons learned from last season. We had pulled on the rope of our internationals more than reason: they had arrived a little physically burnt out at the end of the season. So we’re trying to turn that this year into opportunities for other players. We try to ensure that everyone enters the rotation, to increase the general level and so that these players can eventually allow themselves and be ready for the ultra important matches for us like the European Cup or the final stages. . It worked well last week (Editor’s note, in Clermont), against Montpellier too, but not in Pau. So it depends on the matches.
Do you estimate the next international period during the Six Nations with more certainty than the last season?