French rugby Updates : Le café du Rugby.

The T14 final is tonight, top (Toulouse) plays 3rd (Bordeaux) in the table. Leinster fans will probably be hoping for a Toulouse win as they get top seeds for the ERC as beaten ERC finalists if Toulouse win the Top14.

Toulouse are current T14 Champions and won this season's ERC Champions Cup, they are the aristocrats of rugby and as a neutral I'd usually side with the underdog but I'll certainly be shouting for Toulouse tonight.

Genuinely, gutted for you.

Lucky to get yellow & not ruin this game in first 5 minutes

One way traffic at the moment. Bordeaux look a little shell shocked.

AH give over Dupont

Ref blowing Bordeaux off the park to boot

Toulouse are a serious outfit. Who would have thought it 😂 they’ve been superb tonight

what? that is wild

I agree with the Ref there tbh.

Bordeaux have been shocking here.

I think the officials got all of the major decisions correct. Including the no try.

I know the usual suspects will get the plaudits for Toulouse but I have to say Jack Willis is some player.

Is Jack Willis not one of the usual suspects arlt this stage? Himself and Dupont are consistently Toulouse's top performers

Getting embarrassing for Bourdeax now.

Christ that's a beating.

That's a paddling.

Brilliant win by Toulouse but if any team won the URC final with a scoreline like that they'd be questions about the standard of the league.

Bordeaux must have choked, they never looked like contenders.

Some weirdly long contracts there. 4 years for Skelton and Seuteni who are both over 30.

5 years for Boudehant.

Lille I think

God, he's had zero luck with regards to injury

Depends on what you mean by "bad" but I know he wasn't available to Munster though injuries at the end of last season and was injured again in late 2023, there could well have been other occasions that I can't remember just now

Jonathan Danty started at open side for La Rochelle in their loss to Castres yesterday.

From The Irish Indo ;

Australian winger Suliasi Vunivalu discovered life in the Top 14 can be difficult on his first outing for Ronan O’Gara’s La Rochelle as they faded to a 14-23 loss against bottom-of-the-table Vannes at Stade Marcel Deflandre – their first domestic home defeat in more than a year.

The league convert – who featured in Australia’s 2023 World Cup campaign following his switch to Queensland Reds in 2021 after making his name with Melbourne Storm in the NRL – clearly still has to get to grips with La Rochelle’s game. He was caught out of position more than once and made several handling errors on his debut.

He was far from the only one to have a dismal day in front of another sell-out home crowd. Few La Rochelle players came out of the game in credit. Scrum-half Teddy Iribaren, Jack Nowell, UJ Seuteni, Kane Douglas, Matthias Haddad and Tolu Latu all had days best consigned to the scrap heap.

The defeat, La Rochelle’s third in four Top 14 outings either side of the international break, could not have come at a worse time. O’Gara would have been looking for a strong performance to build on for their Champions Cup bow at English Premiership side Bath on Friday.

“We showed nothing tonight in front of our loyal supporters,” O’Gara said afterwards. “It was a home game before a Champions Cup game and we failed everywhere. And the main architect is me. It’s a big slap in the face.

“We have to ask ourselves how to get out of this bad patch quickly. I have to give the players confidence to attack Bath. I am extremely frustrated, extremely disappointed.”

And he laid down an individual challenge for his players: “I hope they have the courage to go out into town tomorrow. I'm going out and I expect to get a few insults. It’s important that the players feel the fans’ frustration.”

Ronan O'Gara: 'I hope they have the courage to go out into town. I expect to get a few insults. It’s important the players feel the fans’ frustration'

As Champions Cup week looms, Ronan O'Gara lays down challenge to La Rochelle players following home defeat to lowly Vannes

Ronan O'Gara: 'I hope they have the courage to go out into town. I expect to get a few insults. It’s important the players feel the fans’ frustration'

Australian winger Suliasi Vunivalu discovered life in the Top 14 can be difficult on his first outing for Ronan O’Gara’s La Rochelle as they faded to a 14-23 loss against bottom-of-the-table Vannes at Stade Marcel Deflandre – their first domestic home defeat in more than a year.

The league convert – who featured in Australia’s 2023 World Cup campaign following his switch to Queensland Reds in 2021 after making his name with Melbourne Storm in the NRL – clearly still has to get to grips with La Rochelle’s game. He was caught out of position more than once and made several handling errors on his debut.

He was far from the only one to have a dismal day in front of another sell-out home crowd. Few La Rochelle players came out of the game in credit. Scrum-half Teddy Iribaren, Jack Nowell, UJ Seuteni, Kane Douglas, Matthias Haddad and Tolu Latu all had days best consigned to the scrap heap.

The defeat, La Rochelle’s third in four Top 14 outings either side of the international break, could not have come at a worse time. O’Gara would have been looking for a strong performance to build on for their Champions Cup bow at English Premiership side Bath on Friday.

“We showed nothing tonight in front of our loyal supporters,” O’Gara said afterwards. “It was a home game before a Champions Cup game and we failed everywhere. And the main architect is me. It’s a big slap in the face.

“We have to ask ourselves how to get out of this bad patch quickly. I have to give the players confidence to attack Bath. I am extremely frustrated, extremely disappointed.”

And he laid down an individual challenge for his players: “I hope they have the courage to go out into town tomorrow. I'm going out and I expect to get a few insults. It’s important that the players feel the fans’ frustration.”

For Vannes, on the other hand, a first Top 14 win on the road was a perfect response to last weekend’s defeat-from-the-jaws of victory against Bordeaux, when they gave up a 29-0 lead after half-an-hour to lose 29-37. A little more confidence ahead of their Challenge Cup debut against Georgia’s Black Lion in Tbilisi next Saturday.

If there are positives for the home side at the end of a performance in which next to nothing worked, they were in the forwards. Will Skelton, in his 100th club outing, and Levani Botia, on his long-awaited return from injury both played well in a miserable cause. As did Reda Wardi, Uini Atonio, and hooker Quentin Lespiaucq, who scored both their tries.

But there’s evidently plenty of work to do in the shortened timeframe before the trip to southwest England.

There’s a lot for Racing manager Stuart Lancaster to chew on, too, ahead of next week’s Champions Cup opener at Creteil against Harlequins – La Defense Arena is again out of action due to a combination of pop concerts and fight nights.'

From the Guardian / Irish Times :

It is the matchday bus rides to his new club’s stadium that, for Will Collier, perfectly capture the parallel universe of French club rugby. “You can hear the fans when you’re still a minute away,” says the former Harlequins prop, one of the latest band of Premiership pros to relocate to the Top 14, in his case to Jeremy Davidson’s Castres. “You can see the smoke and the flares going off. There are drums and trumpeters ... they even had a saxophonist last week. It’s absolutely bonkers. The passion is wild.”

Welcome to a different world. Castres is a modest-sized town of 50,000-odd people but rugby fever is rampant. “When we played Toulouse at home in October there were people crying in the pregame guard of honour. It meant that much to them.”

Despite the fact Collier played 240 first-team matches for Quins, last weekend’s atmosphere at Clermont’s Stade Marcel-Michelin also made the 33-year-old shake his experienced head. “I came back on following a yellow card and they were baying for blood. It was like they were at some kind of dogfight. It was a real cauldron ... the energy from the crowd was unbelievable.”

The genuine relish in Collier’s voice suggests the collective family decision to swap the easy familiarity of life in Putney for southwest France has already justified the upheaval. No matter that, had he stayed, the popular and respected tighthead might conceivably have added to his haul of two England caps. Better a bracingly fresh life experience than a nagging sense of “if only”.

Collier is far from the only ex-Premiership hired gun enjoying his change of scene. He, his wife Kate and their two young boys Charlie and Freddie enjoy meeting up on their days off with Jack Willis and his family, based in nearby Toulouse.

Former team-mates such as Joe Marchant and Kyle Sinckler are at Stade Français and Toulon respectively, while loads more exiled English internationals are scattered the length and breadth of France. Owen Farrell, Courtney Lawes, Mako and Billy Vunipola, Manu Tuilagi, Jack Nowell, Lewis Ludlam, David Ribbans, Sam Simmonds, Dan Robson, Kieran Brookes, Jack Maunder: the list is lengthy.

Which begs the million-euro question, as this season’s Champions Cup commences: does the English Rugby Football Union need to get with the beat and stop seeing all this as some kind of existential threat to English rugby? Might it not be good news in terms of broadening minds and developing character? And, perhaps, make this a timely moment to re-examine the rule decreeing that only players based in England are eligible for the national team?

That particular debate, from Collier’s perspective, is rapidly becoming a no-brainer. “I don’t want to say, ‘leave the Premiership’ because the Premiership is a fantastic competition. For an older player who is still in the England mix it’s going to be very hard to make that call. But if you’re a younger player on the fringes I would certainly recommend it.

“Steve Borthwick has to be allowed to pick the best players he can. There’s the counterargument of ‘we can’t weaken the Premiership’ but I feel the Premiership is always going to be a great competition. It’s not like there’s going to be a huge exodus of players to France, especially with the JIFF rules (which require a healthy percentage of local-reared players in every Top 14 squad). I feel quite honoured to have found a spot for myself in the Top 14 because they’re so hard to come by.”

Collier is equally convinced that a cross-fertilisation of ideas is beneficial for the English game, whether it be at international or club level. “South Africa are a good example. They benefit hugely from having players who have been all over the place and bring back different things from different rugby cultures. You also learn from different ways of coaching. In the Premiership it’s very often the same kind of rugby done in the same way.”

Venturing outside his comfort zone has also already taught him various other lessons. “Castres is a very small town but I’m absolutely loving it. Going away, experiencing a new culture ... you have to grow. I’ve only been here for six months but you start to appreciate different things a little more. The pace of life is different, I’ve spent a lot more time with my family. I would 100 per cent recommend it.”

As a partner in a restaurant in Bristol with some wine exams under his belt, Collier has also landed in his idea of gastronomic heaven. “Everything revolves around rugby and food, which just happen to be two of my big passions. You can’t throw a stone without hitting a boulangerie here.

“You can also go down to the local supermarket and find the most incredible bottles of wine for €9-€10. You think, ‘This can’t be good’. Then you realise that back home it would be retailing for £30-40 (€36-€48). It’s pretty amazing to have access to that kind of stuff – in limited quantities, obviously.”

Okay, but surely the family’s accommodation must be average? “We managed to find a beautiful house 15 minutes out of town with a big garden and a swimming pool. It’s got a chicken coop, four barbecues and a pizza oven. I’m a big barbecue fan, so it’s ideal.”

No further questions, your honour. Although, in mitigation, the big man’s day job of scrummaging against huge opponents every week is properly demanding – “There’s always something going on” – and there remains non-negotiable pressure to uphold civic pride at least once a fortnight. “In the Top 14 it’s kind of unacceptable for us to lose a home game and that’s certainly the way we’re going to be treating it in Europe as well.”

It is also a frustration that Collier has a slight groin issue and is being rested for his side’s opening trip to Northampton. Castres do not traditionally travel well in Europe but lazy perceptions are always ripe for challenging. “I think it is slightly changing,” says Collier, who will be back to face Munster at home on Friday week. “There seems to be a real energy around the group to go hard this weekend.

“Every player has been coming up to me asking ‘What’s it like at Franklin’s Gardens?’ It’s one of the things they want to tick off, playing against the English champions. We’ve got a big lumpy team with some star-studded backs so we’ll be sending a team who are capable of going toe-to-toe with Northampton.” Either way Collier and his fellow Francophiles do not sound particularly homesick. – Guardian