Champions Cup – “This Racing 92 absent under the bombs”: Midol's opinion after Sale – Racing 92

What's wrong with Racing? A lot of things, you will agree. We will cite in bulk the regularity in performance, the mental approach to big Top 14 or Champions Cup matches and the way of approaching, also, the team's trips outside the Ile-de-France territory. But the biggest point of The improvement of Stuart Lancaster's team is undeniably in terms of mastery of high balls. Obviously, the shortcomings of the Ciel et Blanc in the aerial conquest were once again expressed on Friday evening, in the suburbs of Manchester. There, neither Tristan Tedder nor Henry Arundell were able to respond to the air war unleashed on them by playmaker George Ford and scrum-half Gus Warr, in the north of England.

In the wake of these individual errors, the Sale Sharks easily won the territorial war specific to this type of international meeting. We therefore conclude from the Racingmen's last trip across the Channel that a professional rugby player is never a finished product and that his learning of the “basics”, far from being completed in a training center, on the contrary continues for a lifetime. Therefore, should Stuart Lancaster, the sporting boss of Racing 92, urgently enlist a coach whose specialty is none other than aerial duels? And can the Racingmen really raise the bar in this sector of the game before the end of the season? We doubt it. But without a minimum of assurance in the air, Racing will never be able to put an end to a season that has been erratic so far…