Racing won in Pau despite a barrage of penalties and cards against it. We can draw many conclusions from this. But the main thing is that rugby is not always reducible to numerical data, so much the better.
We don't like the dictatorship of statistics. This idea that the outcome of a meeting should be determined by a series of numbers, percentages, or by a single piece of data: accounting supposed to override all others.
The Pau-Racing match allowed us to thumb our noses at this rationalist vision of rugby, enemy of the more or less definable charm of our sport. How many times have we been told that a dominant team must rely on as few sanctions as possible. How many times have we been obsessed with the balance of penalties. How many times have we heard that a competitive team should be penalized less than ten times per match. A golden number, a threshold of paradise.
Each encounter harbors its own truth
Except that on Saturday, Racing won quite brilliantly in Pau by suffering… 22 penalties against… Eleven in Pau.
And that's not all, the Racingmen won by suffering three yellow cards (Tarrit, Sordoni and Woki). They even played with thirteen players for nine minutes (11-20th). They ended the game with a new yellow card from Woki, transformed into red in the 80th.
Four cards and such a barrage of penalties for a team which scores four away tries, it's a major achievement which undoubtedly says a lot about the level of the two squads or the deficiencies of the opponent. Racing even found a way not to concede points during the nine minutes that it played with two men less than the opponent… This observation ultimately reassures us of the idea that each meeting harbors its own truth, difficult to understand. put into equation.
