The players themselves are confused. “We don't understand much about it,” said Antoine Dupont this Friday January 17 about the functioning of the European Rugby Cup two days before the last match of the group phase at Stade Toulousain against Leicester.
“The group matches of this Champions Cup are extremely important for the future, when we see the impact that the ranking can have on the fact of receiving (during the) final stages, even if we don't understand much about it. the way the teams are classified,” said the scrum-half at a press conference.
“We have difficulty finding logic, but we have to comply with it,” he said, while Toulouse could finish in second place in their group if they do not do better than 'UBB, opposed to the South African Sharks. A second place would earn the reigning champions a place in the round of 16, but a move to the quarter-finals.
“We have no power over that, we try to concentrate on ourselves, to be the best possible but it's true that we have difficulty seeing clearly about this competition and I think that we are not the only ones,” noted Antoine Dupont.
-Before hosting Leicester (Sunday, 4:15 p.m.), Toulouse are second (14 points), one point behind UBB (15 pts), after losing the offensive bonus point during a grueling victory in Durban last week. (20-8). A match played under the South African heat and humidity at the heart of an unprecedented journey for the Toulouse residents, not really to the taste of full-back Thomas Ramos.
“We travel one day, three planes, to play 80 minutes, the same on the way back to go home, we're not the first to have done it but what does it lead to? That’s really the question I’m asking,” he said. “They are thinking a lot at the moment about protecting the players, but are we protecting the players with trips like that? I don’t know,” he asked.
Returning to Toulouse on Monday, the French champions experienced “quite a few flu-like illnesses and gastric problems, according to their coach Ugo Mola. We had a bit of a series of problems, but neither more nor less than what the others experienced, except that when you experience it yourself, you find it very painful. »
