La Rochelle STUN Toulouse - Every Game Was A Thriller! | TOP 14 Digest

Comments · 6

• PA

  @papazoulou9326 · 3 weeks ago (edited)

  Racing fan here, great vid as always. <br>I told my friends that I would have been happy if Bordeaux only put 50 points on us and they were in disbelief and WELL WELL WELL LOOK WHAT HAPPENED. <br>The game kind of went as expected for me...<br><br>For the forwards (the bad) :<br>-The real cause for concern is that UBB’s forwards were a level above ours. Our forwards looked really sluggish, and I feel like we’re a step behind in that department. Intensity, ball-carrying, ruck speed — it was night and day. And even towards the end of the game, they still seemed noticeably fresher than us.<br>In previous games, our big pack was our main strength, but it&apos;s also kind of a one-shot weapon. If it doesn&apos;t work, we don&apos;t really have any alternatives. In the pre-season game against Brive, our pack wasn&apos;t able to really show its dominance, which didn&apos;t make me very optimistic.<br>[I think the different preparation this summer also had a major role to play. Racing clearly was not ready to play away against a team who won the CC last year. <br>UBB played 2 pre-season games between 2 teams that finished above them last season and made solid results and 2 very good games. Meanwhile Racing only played one pre-season game and lost against Brive, who ended up 6th in ProD2 last season.] <br> <br>-With the arrival of Tom Willis and Woki back in form, I expected UBB to be able to counter our forward pack both physically and in terms of speed. <br>I think Willis is that missing link in the Bordeaux pack in terms of brutality. Yes, Bordeaux&apos;s pack could be physical, but their strength was usually being able to play the ball well. Now, they have a proper big boi n°8, which will make it hell for the opposition. <br><br><br>For the backlines battle (the unsurprising) :<br><br>-No surprises in the battle between the backlines. One side had a backline made up of several of the best international players in the world, while the other was a mix of new signings. <br>-When it&apos;s the second game for old man Machenaud and for Costes with the club, and with Joseph Manu (who&apos;s not necessarily our best center either), you can&apos;t expect miracles against a backline that has been playing together for years and are usual contenders for best players of the 6 Nations. <br> <br><br>The ugly : <br>-Conceding more than 60 points is already inexcusable, but doing so despite having a numerical advantage for 30 minutes is what really hurts.<br>-I&apos;m honestly far more pissed at our forwards than our backline. Our backline was always late (look at when Woki sent Costes into the touch-line, where are the rest of the Racing forwards ?).<br> <br>-The new signings showed absolutely nothing :<br>I understood Machenaud&apos;s recruitment as a way to help out Carbonneau and our younger scrum-halves, and I still think it&apos;s a good signing from that POV. But with Carbonneau&apos;s injury, I don&apos;t really understand why we didn&apos;t gun for a medical joker in the pre-season. I do think the management failure here is really not getting a medical joker, rather than Machenaud&apos;s signing itself. In regards to his game, today, it’s difficult to be a scrum half when &nbsp;your forwards are getting completely dominated in every area. <br>However, I would still give his chance to Costes tho. He was bad in defence (like everybody else on the team), but he&apos;s at least trying something when attacking. People are being harsh on him because they expect some miracles. He&apos;s in the same situation as Carbonneau last year I believe. People were harsh on his first half of the season and by the later part everybody said he was great. <br>Seru Uru was bad too, but since he screwed up first try opportunity, he&apos;ll probably play it safer from now on lmao.<br><br>GranBut still, you’d expect them to show something defensively at least. And I know I’m going on about it, but failing to score in 30 minutes while playing 15 against 14 shows that something is seriously wrong.<br> <br> <br>All in all, some positives (clutching at straws there) :<br>We were rusty, had less time to rest due to playing the semi-final, and our starting 9 wasn&apos;t there, either. And well last year UBB also put 60 points on us and they didn&apos;t reach the top 6. <br>So you know, I&apos;m not particularly scarred by the game either. I would rather have a drubbing at the start of a season than one that kills our momentum at a critical time (you can&apos;t kill a momentum in the first game of a season).<br>Given that we’ve now had two warm-up games, we should be able to beat LOU at home. I wasn’t expecting us to come away from Bordeaux with any points anyway (in the end it&apos;s just a goal average problem). <br>With a bit of luck, this disaster will have hurt the players’ pride and fired them up a bit, because we&apos;re on 3 games away (semi-final, Brive, Bordeaux) with a -120 points difference in total. <br> <br>So right now, I&apos;ll really give an opinion on what our season will be after this week-end&apos;s game against Lyon, who is much closer to our level than UBB is. I&apos;m not expecting us to be in the Top 6 (with Carbonneau&apos;s injury, I think this season has turned into a second year of transition under Collazo), but I&apos;m not expecting us to be 10th either. I think we&apos;ll end up 8-9 or something.

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• DI

  @DinoM-o6q · 3 weeks ago

  Lekker informative and fun filled show again. Thank you

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• NE

  @NeillMcKeown · 2 weeks ago

  This Weekend&apos;s games on Premier <br><br>Sat Sep 12<br><br>3:35pm Vannes v Montpellier Premier Sports UK Rugby <br>3:35pm Clermont v Stade Francais Premier Sports UK &amp; Ireland 2 <br>8pm Toulon v La Rochelle Premier Sports UK &amp; Ireland 2 <br> <br>Sun Sep 13 <br> <br>8:05pm Toulouse v Bordeaux Premier Sports UK &amp; Ireland 2

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