Saturday afternoon, the backdrop of this Bayonne-Racing 92 will be special in many ways, for the old team and the future club of Laurent Travers…
It is said that every weekend of Top 14 conceals its share of treasures. At least that’s what the League sells its product to the diffuser to tear it from it for half a billion euros, every four years. Sport being fluctuating and unreasonable by nature, the richness of the rounds of the single hen is however often more random than we want to make us believe. There ? We nevertheless unearthed, among the seven games spanning this weekend, one of these narrative nuggets that the Top 14 is cyclically able to produce. This nugget, it was called “Traversico”, a hard fight between the club that Laurent Travers has led for ten years (Racing 92) and the one he will probably direct in a few weeks, on the banks of the Adour.
When the 2024-2025 season began, said “Toto” was therefore the chairman of the boarding board of the Ile-de-France entity and, under his orders, Stuart Lancaster tried as best they can to take off his big Bertha. Six months later, through leaving the hand to Normand Arnaud Tourtoulou, said goodbye to Jacky Lorenzetti and unofficially started his mission to Bayonne, of which he will be, unless the rugby director (read page 26). In fact, the former British hooker recently collaborated with Grégory Patat on the recruitment of rowing and what we understand, the arrival in Bayonne of the Australian Rob Leota, that Racing had, at the start of the season, looked without wanting to go further, is above all due to the contacts that had then linked through the entourage of the Wallaby. If the presence of “Toto” is still discreet on the side of Jean-Dauger, he nevertheless presented his project to the shareholders of the Basque club on Thursday evening and these were obviously seduced by the speech of the one who was champion of France in Castres (2013) then in Hauts-de-Seine (2016). Does this mean that it is already adopted? Let’s exaggerate anything: Bayonnais rowing so far achieving its best season in the professional era, the skeptics are still numerous and through, which will discover in the Basque Country a popular pressure as it has never known, obviously understood that he did not arrive there in conquered grounds.
The absence of woki will weigh
Even if the former Sports Sports Patron and White will not be in the stands, in Paris-La Défense Arena, the backdrop of this Racing-Bayonne is therefore very aging and adds a little more punch to a poster that was already not lacking. In fact, the western suburbs club, recently eliminated from the CUP challenge by the Lou (29-15), is not yet saved from an improbable industrial accident and for him, a victory against Rowing is therefore worth a fortune. Less conquering in Lyon than it was in the Ile-de-France derby a week earlier (49-24), the Racing 92 will also play this twenty-third day without Cameron Woki (suspended), whose Jump and the air qualities have done so much to the team of Patrice Collazo, in the past three months …
