A week after his feat against Munster, Stade Toulousain is back at Dublin. The Toulouse residents put their suitcases in the Irish capital on Thursday evening. Aviva Stadium, huge showcase of the Irish selection (51,000 seats), should be almost complete Saturday 4 p.m. French time for this poster of the semi-finals of the Champions Cup between the Irish province of Leinster who will play at home and the reigning European champions who can count on several hundred supporters. Three hundred places have been allocated to the club. Toulouse coach Ugo Mola knows that the Stade is eagerly awaited. But he was nevertheless relaxed and joking Thursday at a press conference, comparing the notoriety of his team to the stars of current music like the English singer Ed Sheeran.
A final before the hour on Saturday
I have to say that this XXL shock has everything of a final before its time in a beautiful stadium. “Both teams have ruled the competition for the past twenty years”, recalls Ugo Mola. The Irish of Leinster have won the Champions Cup three times. The Toulouse hold the record for victories in the competition with five successes. They will experience their fourth consecutive semi-final on Saturday. This series began in 2019 with a defeat against Leinster (30-12) who had played their last European final that season. The two teams have already met twice in the semi-finals at this stage of the competition, and the Irish lead two victories (2011 and 2019) to one (2010). If successful, Toulouse would grab a second consecutive final after their victory against La Rochelle a year ago (22-17).
Toulouse dreams of the Irish triptych
To access the final again, the people of Toulouse will already try to achieve Saturday what their coach Ugo Mola calls the “irish triptych”namely to win a third away game in less than a month in Irelandafter eliminating Ulster in the round of 16 and Munster in the quarter-finals last weekend. A snatched victory after an epic match won on penalties. This triptych would never have been realized before according to Ugo Mola. But for that, the Toulouse rugby players will have to manage to dig deep into their mental and physical resources to win a second match in a week in the lair of the Aviva Stadium. The Stadium can still write a page in its history on Saturday in Dublin. “It would be a shame to say that we are tired”replies full-back Thomas Ramos.