After a season which once again broke attendance records, the two teams meet again this Friday June 28 in the evening in Marseille in the final of the rugby championship.
A statistic in the form of a decoy: over the last ten years, no less than seven different clubs have been crowned French champions of the Top 14. From there to imagine that no clearly established hierarchy is emerging at the top of French rugby, it is not There is only one step… which we will however be careful not to take, otherwise we risk falling to the bottom of the ravine, as the hegemony of the Toulouse Stadium has rarely seemed so blatant.
The observation that would even border on truism if by chance the group led by Ugo Mola were to lift the Brennus shield this Friday, June 28 (kick-off at 9:05 p.m., live on Canal + and France 2). This would only ever be the 23rd national title in the history of the red and black club and would even allow it to sign a new double, Top 14-Champions Cup (ex-European Cup, now extended to the southern shores of Africa) – a feat already achieved in 1996 and 2021. But for that, there is still one match to play and it would be wrong to look down on an opponent, Union Bordeaux Bègles, who have lived in joy the last days preceding the meeting, since their happy victory at home, Saturday, June 22, in the semi-final, against Stade Français.
Attendance records broken
Because, after three failures at this stage of the competition, UBB can no longer stand being taken for a fool (like Clermont used to be, who lost all their finals). So, by dint of saying that the club was moving upmarket (see the autumn recruitment of French winger Damian Penaud or Japanese international Tevita Tatafu), it was necessary that this also be verified on the pitch. So that, only eighteen years after its birth, UBB is today achieving its goals (or almost), without forgetting that the offspring is the result of the marriage of the illustrious Stade Bordelais and CA Bordeaux Bègles Gironde who, going back more than a century (1899 precisely!), have a combined total of nine national titles.
All this to explain that, in the prefecture of Nouvelle-Aquitaine, rugby is all the less of an anomaly, as the UBB can legitimately brandish (for the tenth consecutive year) the highest attendance of the season, with, in a lively Top 14 which continues to break attendance records (2,775,951 entries in the last regular season, up 3% compared to the previous one), an average of almost 28,000 spectators per match, at the Chaban-Delmas stadium. While the Stade Toulousain, for its part, must be satisfied with second place with just over 20,000 aficionados at Ernest-Wallon.
Serenity on the threshold of plenitude
A podium from the stands, certainly appreciable for the seventh and first budgets of French rugby respectively, but which will not weigh heavily in the face of the reality on the ground where, as we pointed out in the preamble, the Toulouse Stadium has almost never stopped running at full throttle this year. Including when international competition (World Cup, then Six Nations Tournament) forced him to hand over all his best elements to the French XV. Because with a plethoric bench, which responded while waiting for the return to the highest level of the French stars (the imperial Antoine Dupont in the lead) once digested the traumatic elimination against South Africa during the last World Cup , and the contribution of even improved foreign sizes on the banks of the Garonne (from the Argentinian winger Juan Cruz Mallía to the English third row Jack Willis, similarly radiant), there emanates from the Toulouse Stadium 2023-2024 a serenity on the threshold of fullness, validated by first place in the championship phase, as well as by this victory after extra time – always good for capital confidence – at the end of May in London, against the Irish province of Leinster in the final of the Champions Cup (it is said in less arduous than the Top 14, with its “expeditious” formula, limited to seven matches before the epilogue).
A success story which brings us to the Stade-Vélodrome in Marseille, at the time of the second Top 14 final outside Ile-de-France (after that of 2016, at the Camp Nou in Barcelona), where Bordeaux , which records the returns of opener Matthieu Jalibert and Tongan right pillar Ben Tameifuna, will however still have at least eighty minutes to dream. Even if it means suggesting to the outsiders – third in the championship phase – a preliminary visit to Notre-Dame de la Garde. That it is permissible, at the start of this volcanic summer, not only to invoke rugby, moreover: “In moments of joy, be by our side to share the joy. In the dark hours, be our beacon, dispelling the darkness of uncertainty and fear.”
