If Toulouse and UBB are at the top of the ranking, there is total indecision at all other levels, which offers many surprises. Decryption.
It’s a refrain heard and repeated for years now. However, it must be admitted that it becomes thicker after each off-season: the Top 14 is more and more dense. And this is more true than ever in recent weeks. Although it is certainly worth making a notable exception, at the very top of the table. If Toulouse and Bordeaux-Bègles – finalists of the last championship and current main providers of the French XV – have already taken an option on the first two positions in the ranking, it is quite simply because they present today the two collectives best oiled and most complete in France. But it is clear that behind them, the race for qualifying places for the final phase is marked by perhaps unprecedented homogeneity. This is verified through the numbers, since only five points separate third from seventh. So understand that Clermont, Toulon, Bayonne, La Rochelle and Castres are within a pocket square or almost. Knowing also that Racing 92 follows closely, that Montpellier (ranked ninth after eleven days, after having come close to relegation last season) was close to winning on the UBB field on Saturday…
This is how to arrive at the other visible aspect of the general tightening, mentioned above. This Top 14 version 2024-2025 offers the delicious sensation that everyone can beat everyone. Certainly, this seems like a no-brainer, when it comes to a sport whose nature is to remain undecided until the final whistle has blown…
Pau revives, Lyon in free fall
But recent results actually show that anything is possible. Or how can we explain that after having suffered a historic comeback against Bordeaux-Bègles the previous weekend, the promoted Vannes team is capable of winning on the pitch of La Rochelle, winner of the Champions Cup in 2022 and 2023? A resounding feat, which proves that we should not draw too definitive lessons at the bottom of the ranking either. Certainly, the RCV is still at the bottom and is four lengths behind twelfth place, but its coup against Marcel-Deflandre will undeniably infuse invaluable confidence into the group, which Jean-Noël Spitzer hopes to use to set in motion a positive dynamic. . Unlike Lyon, which was fighting for qualification a month ago and which has just suffered a fifth defeat in a row on the pitch at Pau, another bad student at the moment who took the opportunity to breathe a little. Le Lou is thirteenth (synonymous with the accession barrier) and will have to battle, particularly with Perpignan who have lost three of their last four matches.
France
