The bellows fell back as quickly as it had inflated. After a sensational start to the match rewarded by a converted try, the Toulouse game dangerously withered on Saturday January 15 in the Champions Cup. Caught up, then led, Stade Toulousain paid dearly for its many fallen balls and its inability to be clean in conquest.
The reigning European champion lost (30-22) against the English Wasps and saw his qualification for the round of 16 upset. Having missed the defensive bonus at the end of the game, Stade Toulousain will have no room for error when receiving Cardiff next weekend.
You miss a being and everything is depopulated? To assert, as the cliché puts it, that the absence of Antoine Dupont (injured) is the reason for all the ills of the Stadistes would be a bit presumptuous. Yes, the international scrum-half single-handedly carried his team to victory against Cardiff when his team entered the fray, but his performance already failed to hide the shortcomings that have become recurrent among the French champions. . His replacement in the scrum, Martin Page-Relo – first professional tenure – did what he could in a team that often confused speed with haste.
Despite a hot start and a try slammed after a short minute (1’18 precisely) by third-line François Cros, behind a carried ball, and a numerical superiority of nearly 50 minutes (red card conceded by Jacob Umaga in the 34th), Romain Ntamack’s teammates fell back into their ways. Balls that fell on passes that were too strong, balls lost on the ground after a lack of support, touches not found, weighed down Toulouse’s conquest and prevented the Rouge et Noir from going all the way. In total, the Toulouse lost no less than 19 balls.
Unable to make the break, they were first punished by the power of Wasps mainstay Biyi Alo. The test validated on video, then transformed by Jimmy Gopperth allowed the English to return to height (19th, 7-7). The third row Brad Shields then doubled the bet thanks to a trickster try on a touchdown combination (32nd). International hooker Peato Mauvaka may have tried to keep the flame going by going there with his try (61st, 20-15), Alfie Barbeary immediately came to shower the Stadistes’ hopes of victory.
Then remained the possibility of snatching a precious defensive bonus. Between balls returned and bad choices to attack the line, the Toulousains took care of destroying their chance on their own. The reigning European champion will have to show a completely different face against Cardiff if he wants to finish in the eight qualifiers and avoid the affront of elimination from the group stage.