Romain Ntamack promises to be 100% “with any number on the back”

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Placed in the center in the fall against Argentina (29-20) and Georgia (41-15), Romain Ntamack welcomes the competition from Matthieu Jalibert with serenity. The Stade Toulousain player confided in an interview with AFP, before the match against the All Blacks, Saturday, November 20 at the Stade de France.

After two games, what is your assessment of your repositioning?

Romain Ntamack: I am quite satisfied. In the second game, we were able to be better behind and better connect. It took us a few days to find our automatisms. We saw it against Argentina but we didn’t panic, we knew it was going to come. Against Georgia, I felt good, I was comfortable, I touched a lot of balls, I was able to create shifts.

Were you comfortable in this position that you had not practiced for a long time?

Even though it had been a while, I was comfortable. It took me a few practice to adjust the positions and benchmarks. But the automatisms quickly came: we get along very well with the guys behind, we speak the same rugby language so, to find each other, it was quite easy.

Which position do you prefer?

I have always said, and I have never hidden it, that my position was opener. But, as long as I’m in the field, I don’t necessarily have a preference. I fight for the jersey. My first position is opener, I want people to see me as such and I have already said it. Afterwards, if I am made to evolve in the center for strategic reasons, I will play there with pleasure. When it was announced to me, I welcomed the news with great pleasure. I never balked at playing center.

The coach came to speak to me very early at the time of the rally and he explained it to me. I told him that there was no problem. With any number on my back, as long as I’m on the pitch, I’m going to give it 100%. I was not at all unhappy. I took it as a sign of confidence, it’s a good sign.

When you came out against Argentina, we saw you annoyed, your face closed …

Annoyed, no. There were quite a few things mixed up in my head: I wanted to show a better image, I know I was expected and I wanted to do better, even though I was not used a lot, very little used in defense … I had the impression of making a match a little half-hearted. I was a little frustrated because I wanted to do more and still had a lot of energy to give. It quickly came down and there is no problem.

What is your relationship with Matthieu Jalibert?

We get along well. There is a lot of excitement around both of us and people can feel like we are competing all the time. But we know that we get along well, we discuss, as with all the players. There is no animosity between us, quite the contrary. When we are both aligned on the field, we do everything to make the team win.

Do you understand the skepticism about this association?

The staff decides. We do our best to help the team win, to give the best image of us. What he says to himself on the right or on the left does not matter to me. If we had put Argentina 50 points and played a huge game, we would have said we had found the magic formula. It did not happen like that, therefore, inevitably, we say that it is not that.

We knew we were going to face a tough team, very difficult to play, with a lot of stoppages. We weren’t necessarily going to put our game in place, especially since we had not played together for nine months. We knew we weren’t going to find all the solutions, all the automatisms from the first game. We were all quite frustrated at the end of the game because we know we can do a lot more.

What should be done to make the game more fluid?

You have to work, train, discuss, create automatisms in the field. For that, it is necessary to keep a framework of the same players to keep these automatisms and to garner a maximum of confidence together. The only thing that works: the big nations, the New Zealanders, the English, the South Africans, have always been the best because they had a continuity of players and they played together for 50, 60, 70 selections, for years. There is no secret.


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