Amateur rugby: “The nine matches we have left are nine finals…” AS Fleurance ready to go to coal to ensure its survival

After a checkered start to the season, the Fleurantins are back in action at the start of 2025. And to start, the troops of co-presidents Jérôme Lhospital and Julien Vigneau will have to negotiate a delicate trip to Salles, this Sunday January 12.

Co-trainer Philippe Maymat takes stock of the recovery, after the holiday break: “The conditions for the recovery are not perfect given the vagaries of the weather and the difficult terrain. We resumed this week because we had chosen to give the group two weeks of rest, after the late match played at the end of 2024.”

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Now, we have to get back to it and the Fleurantin coach gives us the temperature of the locker room: “We attack with a sprinter’s state of mind I will say, because for the moment we have no other choice than to sprint through the nine games we have left. We need to get as many points as possible and as quickly as possible, so for us, as we speak, it’s nine finals and then we’ll see. But we have no other choice than the desire to try to gain points at Salles, to beat Marmande behind, and to string everything together in order to have the maximum number of points to move away from the relegation zone. »

Philippe Maymat continues: “The state of mind is therefore to take as many points as possible and perform in Salles and then perform in the other matches. For the moment, we don’t have any room for maneuver so we’re not going to manage it game by game, but we’re going to play them all hard to try to win them. »

“The players hold the cards”

So yes, this Salles match has a certain importance because it will surely set the pace for the restart and Philippe Maymat is fully on it: “We are preparing Salles as a crucial match with, already, the concentration of the players and awareness of the need points. There, I think we are ready, then we know very well that between the first leg and the return leg things have evolved. »

“We studied them on video, we know their qualities, we identified areas of attack… Afterwards, we approach it as one of the nine matches that remain for us to play without putting pressure on ourselves and the fear of playing and to do badly. It’s a match like any other with a strategy that we will have put in place on Friday evening and that’s it. It’s important to know how the opposing team plays but after the strength of a group, it’s also about playing to your own strengths and correcting your weaknesses from the previous match. »

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“And the main weak point we had against Valence-d’Agen was the management of emotions. We made gross errors linked to excessive behavior with inappropriate clearances, returned penalties, unnecessary scratching on the ground, analyzes the ASF co-trainer. We cannot make efforts on one side and annihilate all these efforts through individual behaviors in which we lack control; we must not allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by emotions. »

So all that remains is to apply all of this. Philippe Maymat concludes: “We are moving slowly towards the match, but on Sunday from 3:15 p.m., the die is cast and the players have the cards in hand. But with Walter (Desmaison) we are in the group, we are responsible for when things go well, we are responsible for when things do not go well, we are fully with them and we are all responsible for everything. »