Attractive and more on the occasion of the Ile-de-France derby, the Racingmen will still have to raise their tone, opposite the Lou, if they want to win this weekend at the Matmut Stadium in Gerland…
You talk about a spring sweetness … There, Gerland burns, the cobblestones crack, the walls sweat. This old concrete skeleton, heated like a forge, is like a casserole dish to jump. And now they arrive, these Racingmen, the heads still shot by their immense victory against the false brothers of the Stade Français, returned Sunday evening to eternal regrets and a severe cure of Prozac … They won, yes. They dismissed the gallows, but for a time only. Because by caricaturing to the extreme, the pro D2 is a bit like the mower: he never forgets, wait at the turn, you jump on it when you lower the guard …
The gonzes of Patrice Collazo know this. This exhausting, painful erratic season is in no way over and still claims fights. So what? We are reaching this challenge today, or the tiny hope of raising it soon. “Challenge Cup”, as the Britons call it. A competition that we treat, by reflex, like the bastard, impure, of the champions cup, on which Racing has just broken the ratt three times (2016, 2018 and 2020). And yet everything is there, or almost. Because a club is a bit like a “boat”told us on Tuesday evening a colleague more inspired than ever: “Either he advances or he stagnates and rots.” In any event, the march forward is often linked to a title and the label of it ultimately matters little: it takes metal, concrete, argentic. And this hope of trophy, as modest as it is at the dawn of a semi-final on hostile terrain, goes through a performance in Lyon. Impossible, you say? Not sure, for the simple reason that Racing, without being completely healed, stands more straight and sail faster.
And at the end, a trophy?
For the past few weeks, Plessis-Robinson in Nanterre, the melody has returned. The forwards plow the earth, the big “Tao” slams loads, Cameron Woki turns at full power, Josua Tuisova has found his boots of seven leagues and Owen Farrell, whose spectrum has so far had not seen, even puts itself in tuning off. Not reversing, the former English scorer? Not yet, no. But devilishly precise at the foot, so just in the offensive animation and well determined to remind anyone who dares to penetrate its catchment area that rugby, it started it north of England and by play in XIII, where each tackle is little or prou a homicide. In Racing, this speed, this flexibility; This rugby of seducers, lost, sometimes betrayed, but never really disappeared from collective memory, of the“Adn u club”as the players say today.
Jacky Lorenzetti, patriarch in navy blue costume, observes all this from behind the scenes. He ate, pebbles, over this incredible season. The scoundrel even pushed him, for the first time in twenty years of rugby, to separate from a manager in the circumstances that we know. In his eyes, this spring 2025 is therefore both a boon and a question of honor, image, project, long -term survival. Because vis-à-vis everyone, the general public, supporters, partners and elders, Racing must remain what it claims to be: a cador of modern rugby, a factory in Champions, a great Europe. And for that, you have to win back. By all means. Even by the prism of this hated, mocked, but now necessary cup challenge. So, do we dance?
