The strange skid of Toulouse’s Paul Costes after the final

Special envoy to Marseille

At first, we thought it was good-natured. Friendly even. A large part of the Toulouse team invaded the conference room, some dressed in just underpants, to, we thought, share a little of their joy with the journalists present. And then Antoine Dupont sat down behind the big table, Thomas Ramos, opposite him, played the journalist. With arrogance. “A stupid question, Mr. Dupont, about the Vélodrome?” Nothing innocent. The day before, the Toulouse captain had hardly appreciated being asked about his bad memories of the Vélodrome, between a red card against South Africa and his broken jaw against Namibia in the World Cup. It was therefore not a question of celebrating, but of openly mocking the media, which had been laudatory – to say the least… – for months with this superb team from Stade Toulousain.

Equipped with magnums of beer, a few players then began to generously spray the careless journalists who remained within range. This is the moment that the young and talented three-quarter center Paul Costes chose to address the representatives of the press with an aggressiveness that did not fail to surprise. “You’re just here for the buzz, state-bought media!” And to leave the room on this sally which has taken all the journalists present by surprise, wondering for a long time about the hidden meaning of this sentence. Without finding the deep meaning despite clear conspiracy whiffs. A passage unfortunately cut in the videos published on X…