While barely half of the Grenoble team was present during last year's half, the summer recruits are still aware of the symbolic stakes of this match, like the Julien Hériteau center.
Arriving from Clermont, French international center Julien Hériteau (30 years old, 1 cap) was unanimously considered the flashiest recruit in the Isère squad. The most surprising, too, as we said that given his recent career in the Top 14 (more than 130 match sheets in the elite between Agen, Toulon and Clermont) and his anything but canonical age, the native Gersois would have able to bounce back elsewhere than in Pro D2… “This may have been badly perceived by some but what I wanted this summer was to commit to the long term… In Grenoble, there is still a real project. It is a club which has a history in Top 14 and I think that with all this backbone of young people who are performing and who are taking the club up, there is something concrete. After two consecutive lost finals, it is a club which tends to want to move up after having achieved itself. restructured. felt that there was a very clear vision and project, which I really wanted to be a part of.”
A bet which today seems to be well and truly a winning one, even if nothing is obviously certain as the outcome of the season is still very far away. “When everything is going well, it's true that we tend to say to ourselves that we made the right choice, smiled Hériteau. We are first, we are producing rugby that is attractive, I am having fun on the pitch with this team… I just hope that it will continue like this until the end of the season.”
“There will be tension”
Because in rugby, everything can happen very quickly. The Provencals who are waiting for Hériteau and his team this evening know this better than anyone, defeated at home last season by FCG in the semi-final. Enough to give this match a dimension of revenge? “ We are two clubs that tend to play for the rise, so between that and this little past, it is certain that there will be tension, confirms Hériteau. Already, during the first leg from which we narrowly escaped, it was felt. Clearly, we feel that a little antagonism is being created and that they will receive us well. It's normal: Aix who had been in the lead all season and I think that in their minds, the fact that Grenoble is going to their home to break the codes has still not happened. We discussed it quite a bit this week: it was a great achievement last year, Provence remains a difficult team to maneuver, especially on home soil. We'll see how it goes, but whatever happens, we'll have to rely on what we do well to get a result.”
Among its strong points? The FCG will obviously be able to count on an increasingly polished game project. With the particularity that this weekend, between the starts of the Welshman Davies, the Fijian Rasaku, the Georgian Kveseladze and the Namibian Mouton, the FCG three-quarter line will present quite a melting pot. What to lose in reference points and quality of communication? “The announcements are common to everyone, we have been working with them for half the season now, there will be no problem with that, evades Hériteau. For the rest, we will communicate in English, even if that's not really my thing…” The main thing being, above all, outside, to be particularly rigorous and impervious in defense. A register where Hériteau has already asserted himself over the course of his seven starts this season, the prospect of fighting a duel against the legend George North sufficient to increase the motivation tenfold…
