Ntamack makes sure for Toulouse
RONAN O’Gara must be wondering what he has to do for his La Rochelle side to beat Toulouse when it matters. At least, however, he has a better idea of what he shouldn’t do, starting with not losing multiple players to cards.
The two sides have now met five times in the knockout phase of either the Champions Cup or Top 14. And Ugo Mola’s 22-time champions have won all of them – including the finals in 2021 and 2023, a game that was decided by Romain Ntamack’s late-late solo wonder-try.
Toulouse have had a much better season than their opponents but victory over La Rochelle at the Matmut Atlantique in Bordeaux on Friday wasn’t as straightforward as the 39-23 scoreline suggests, even though La Rochelle played most of the second half with a numerical disadvantage and the final quarter with just 13 on the pitch after Uini Atonio and then Reda Wardi were sent off.
Despite the reds – and the three yellows that were also waved during the 80 minutes in Bordeaux on Friday – this wasn’t a dirty game. It was intense and hard, rather than niggly. It was a match-up that deserved to be one game later in the season.
Toulouse full-back Thomas Ramos admitted afterwards that the two second-half red cards had tipped the match decisively in the title holders’ favour. “Maybe tonight, without those two red cards, we would have lost the match,” he told French broadcaster Canal Plus in a pitchside post-match interview.
“Discipline is important. The Rochelais made mistakes and we scored points, then we made mistakes and they went in front before half-time. It’s a pity that we couldn’t stay at 15 against 15, but I think the referee was forced to show a red card at those moments.”
Ramos is probably right about the referee’s lack of options. Atonio may have pleaded a case for mitigation following his high hit on Thibaud Flament in the 43rd minute of what was, at the time, a nicely balanced match. But he was always coming in high and hard, and mitigation only goes so far. In this case, for referee Tual Trainini, it didn’t go far enough.
And Wardi only has himself to blame after losing his cool in the 61st minute and headbutting a gloating Julien Marchand – who was sin-binned for his part in Wardi’s downfall.
Those cards were something of a shame. The match was gloriously poised at the end of a high-intensity, all-action first period. La Rochelle were in front on the scoreboard, but Toulouse always looked dangerous when they had the ball in open play.
“We did the job in the first half, and we could have done much better [in the second],” La Rochelle fly-half Antoine Hastoy said. “This season, we have come a long way and we hoped for much better than that. Everyone wanted to do well … there was a lot of commitment but red cards weren’t the commitment we wanted.”
A card – yellow this time – had already hurt La Rochelle. Jack Nowell was binned for kicking the ball out of a ruck a metre or so from the tryline, and Toulouse scored twice in his absence.
Then Greg Alldritt crashed over just before halftime after Jack Willis was the scapegoat for repeated Toulouse infringements.
But Atonio’s red was the begin-ning of the end of La Rochelle’s Top 14 dream this season. But this is not an argument for 20-minute red cards.
“Ronan O’Gara must be wondering what his side need to do to record a win over Toulouse”
As O’Gara said in the post-match press conference: “A red card should influence a match. If we’d tackled low all evening, we wouldn’t be having this debate. Now I’m going to try to train them a little better.”
His is an approach to red that others could learn from. The whole idea of strong sanctions for clumsy tackles like Atonio’s is to make them as unacceptable as deliberate foul play. Had he got lower, he wouldn’t have found himself in red territory. It was his error that forced Trainini’s card. And intentional or not, it was still a dangerous tackle.
The prop has been here before – he was lucky to escape with a yellow in a Six Nations match in Dublin – so there certainly should be no ‘tackle school’ option this time to reduce any ban.
Three second-half tries settled the game – but the last of them came seconds before the final whistle, and despite being down to 13, La Rochelle were briefly within six points of Toulouse as they refused to go quietly into the Bordeaux night.
The inconvenient truth is that this match, though it was decided by red cards, wasn’t ruined by them. La Rochelle were still in the hunt deep into the second period before Toulouse put the game out of reach. A 79th-minute try for Matthis Lebel was the flattering icing on the cake.
Toulouse will defend their Top 14 title against Bordeaux at Marseille’s Velodrome on Friday night, after they beat Stade Francais 22-20 in the second semi-final in front of a second full house in as many days at the Matmut Atlantique. Bordeaux raced into an early lead with tries from two maul tries for hooker Maxime Lamothe. But, with a quarter of the game gone, the Parisians finally pulled some phases together, and Romain Briatte crashed over from short range to reduce the deficit first-half deficit. Bordeaux looked to have the game in the bag as two sides traded tries in the second half – but a try after the hooter following a Stade onslaught gave Joris Segonds a diffcult shot at goal, which he fired just wide.
