Maxime Lucu appeared before the press after the final lost to Stade Toulouse. The scrum half of UBB and the French team confided his sadness after his team’s heavy defeat.
Maxime, your first reaction after the heavy defeat in the final against Toulouse?
It’s very difficult to accept. Having such a season, giving a lot of strength to reach the final… It’s difficult for the club and the supporters. And above all, what prevails beyond losing a final is missing out. To suffer this humiliation. It’s hard.
Your manager Yannick Bru confided that very quickly, he felt that you were at the end of your strength. Did you have the same feeling on the pitch?
They scored quickly on clean shots at Stade Toulouse. We knew they were going to want to put a lot of pressure on us because we had one less day of recovery. We took tests too quickly. At first we held on but we ended up exploding. And then we saw the Shield disappear little by little and we gave up.
You said before the match that UBB would have to show their best side to win, but we have the feeling that this was your team’s worst side of the season…
It was complicated… Very complicated. We were told again that we were facing a big team. It’s the truth. There is a huge gap between them and us. They have many finals and titles under their belt. But we must also highlight the season that we had, and that few of you (the journalists) have emphasized. We missed out but that doesn’t take away from what we did this year.
- Read also: “Very quickly, we saw that we were not invited”, regrets Yannick Bru (Bordeaux-Bègles)
Do you feel like you’ve reached a milestone this year?
This defeat must fuel us to come back with a lot of certainty next season. We have made a lot of progress. UBB has never been to the final, and we will have to ride on that while analyzing what we are missing compared to a team like Toulouse. Once again we came up short against a team that wanted one more title.
Your tears, what did they convey?
You play a final, you dream all week of lifting the Shield. I didn’t want to think about these things this week because it’s putting pressure on yourself. I gave everything and I wanted to lead the club to a French championship title. Losing like that hurt me a lot. The season was nervous, there were a lot of things, the World Cup, the 6 Nations, and to finish here, like this, it’s hard to accept. Today I wanted to be rewarded and that wasn’t the case.
Are you going to think about the 59 points you conceded for a long time?
Yes, after 59, 40 or 30, for me it’s the same thing. We gave up because we didn’t manage to do the right things. It’s not our state of mind. It’s difficult to give a lot and see that in the final, nothing works. We all gave up.
What were the words of your manager Yannick Bru towards you?
Yannick has brought us a lot this season. I came back from a very complicated period, you know that very well, and the words he had, everything he did for me during the season, it put me back in the saddle and it proved to me the man I was. He told me not to lower my head.
