Sébastien Piqueronies
“It’s a simple smile of pride, of a job well done and of victory. At one point we saw ourselves clearly dominated by this great team from Castres. But we must not forget that the Top 14 is tough all the time. That Castres is a big Top 14 team, they showed it again today. At the moment, we don’t have all our strength.
Considering that, that we are playing a big opponent with full confidence and a tough competition, we simply have to smile and be very happy with the victory. Despite the indiscipline, and these kick-off receptions which annoyed me terribly in the first half.
A really successful half where we put on a territorial pressure game which worked wonderfully. With three large slags, opposite these three camp exits. The exit of Beka (Gorgadze) has a lot to do with it. We get penalized three times, it’s the little blackboard. But our intentions were clear. And our men were terribly determined, in the same direction.”
Loïc Credoz’s reaction
Loïc Credoz
“We will remember above all the victory. We won, that’s the main thing. I wasn’t there the last few seasons but I think it was a bit of a bane of the Section, with some really bizarre scenarios. Last season, it was like today, there was a big gap. But they lost and this year we won it by resisting in the second half.
That’s 4 points, they don’t have any so it’s a perfect evening. Everything that happened in the first half allowed us to win. We played at their home, we didn’t put ourselves under pressure, we were. So we fed off their mistakes, we were very clean on our attacking balls, we didn’t make too many mistakes.
It’s easy when rugby is like that. That’s what we didn’t do in the second half, we stayed in the locker room a bit at half-time. To be corrected very quickly. We are in difficulty on ball defenses so that puts them ahead because we take penalties and these are easy meters for them.
We put ourselves under pressure all the time, we don’t tackle hard enough, we often suffer so they are making progress. It’s normal for a yellow card to arrive, we have one less player. So, rugby is simple in these moments and it’s normal that we take points. But we didn’t put ourselves in complete darkness to win in the end”.
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Émilien Gailleton’s reaction
Emilien Gailleton
There is a ball on which I find myself in the (winger) position. But I’m working on it. We take a ball in the space behind my back. On the last rejected try, I asked the opposite sideline referee, apparently we would have tackled a Castres player without a ball. I was on the opposite side so I didn’t see anything… You have to be very happy with a victory, it’s not nothing. We lost Beka from the start, it wasn’t done. The forwards were able to resist the Castres, who came back into the match very well at the break.
Now we have to switch to Toulouse because a big match awaits us (next Saturday at 9:05 p.m.). Even when we were ahead by a long way, by 22 points, I told myself that it wasn’t over because in front of scrums and carried balls – and that’s very important in our championship – we were in a bit of difficulty. So I knew the match wasn’t over.”
