The final round of the Top 14 regular season was played last night, with seven fixtures kicking off at 9.05 pm. Endless permutations were possible, but after a night of see-sawing, it finished like this (the right hand side of the graphic).
The European champions of this season, since last Saturday’s overrunning of Leinster in Bilbao, finished 8th in the Top 14, and have failed to qualify for the knockout stages. Losing four times at home, including last night to Clermont, did not help their cause. Despite last night’s victory, Clermont also failed to repeat last season’s top 6 qualification, not helped by a home defeat to Racing the previous week.
The left hand side of the graphic shows where we were 12 months ago, at the end of the regular season. UBB and Clermont have already been discussed. Bayonne rarely looked likely to repeat last season’s heroics, as internal politics seemed to affect everything they did on the pitch, resulting in the departure of general manager/head coach Gregory Patat in mid-February. He will take charge of Brive in Pro D2 next season, as France’s coaching merry-go-round does its best impression of English football’s Premiership.
Toulon flattered to deceive in the Top 14, though a four point Champions Cup semi-final defeat to Leinster at the Aviva showed what might have been. Head coach Pierre Mignoni was forced into a mid-season sabbatical after suffering a ‘breakdown’ (his word), which resulted in an MRI scan, amongst other interventions. He has since returned to work, and his honesty about the self-inflicted pressure and workload was admirable, as was the very public support of his president, Bernard Lemaitre. We do sometimes forget that these are regular human beings, trying like hell to do their absolute best, whilst under relentless scrutiny.
So next weekend we move to the barrages stage of the competition. Pau (unbeaten at home in the regular season, and the only team who have such a record) at home to Racing on Saturday night (13th June), with the winner playing Stade Toulousain in Marseille the following Friday. And then just by coincidence, Stade Francais (lost last night at La Rochelle) at home against La Rochelle on Sunday night (14th June), for a semi-final against Montpellier on Saturday 20th June, also in Marseille. So La Rochelle’s fabulous end of season run squeezed them into the top 6, winning seven of their last eight regular fixtures, with only a loss at Bayonne interrupting the sequence. Do they have momentum? Yes, they do. Can ROG get them over the line against Paul Gustard’s hard-to-beat Stade Francais? I’m going to say yes.
Pau versus Racing? Patrice Collazo has done a fine job at Racing, given that things had not gone well for the previous post-holder, now doing fine work at Connacht. A solid core of Fijians runs through the team, and happy Fijians make for dangerous opponents, but Sebastien Piqueronies has been building something good at Pau for a while now. If the likes of Gailleton, Brau-Boirie, Attissogbe and Grandidier-Nkanang get their hands on some possession, urged on by the fanatical Stade Hameau support, Pau can pull this off. Worth noting the magnitude of their achievement already, as they have never previously qualified for the barrages stage of the Top 14, and haven’t been in a semi-final since 2000. And their last final…1964.
You will have noticed the one common team in the finishing positions of the last two regular seasons. If two consecutive wins is a ‘back-to-back’, and three on the spin is a ‘three-peat’, do we need to prepare a description for a ‘four-timer’, other than ‘four-timer’? Let’s get through the barrages first, both of which will be mighty games. Attachez vos ceintures, as they say in these parts.