ACurrently, Stade Rochelais is struggling to string together performances, but also efforts from one phase to another. And this is what worries Sébastien Boboul the most, the coach of the maritime attack, while the defeat of the Yellow and Black in Treviso (32-25), Saturday, comes six days after the defeat conceded at home against Leinster (14-16). “We were hoping to validate last weekend's great performance a little, but we put in a more than average performance. We would like to move forward from match to match and that is not the case, we are falling back into our ways a little. We expected very good opposition, we didn't respond,” breathes the former full-back.
Not for lack of determination, even if it was visibly complicated to show the same intensity as against Leo Cullen's Irish, but more because the Maritimes were lacking from a playing point of view. On Saturday, Ulupano Seuteni suffered faced with the density of Treviso's midfield, and the entire Stadista attack caught a cold. “We need to review the images but perhaps we didn't move the ball enough on the outside to stretch this defense and make it move backwards,” Boboul reflects. We did it partially, not long enough. »
A paradoxical management of the bench
And then, physically, they now have great difficulty moving back quickly when, on a recovery ball, their opponent pushes them far into their camp. Between the difficulty of coming back and that of finding length at the foot, they find themselves too quickly on the ropes, suffocating under the opposing attacks that follow. The fatigue of a group undermined by absences is an admissible argument. But in this case, why leave Thierry Paiva – although not a partridge of the year – and the young Nikolozi Sutidze and Hugo Reus on the bench, when Hoani Bosmorin has done a lot of good?
“You never know when it’s going to be your moment, what you’re going to have to do but you have to be ready every day”
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As a result, Quentin Lespiaucq played a second match in its entirety, and with 14 balls played in the hand and 17 tackles, he was indeed not idle. “I try not to manage myself, to trust what I have in my legs and in terms of cardio. What's hard is that compared to the Leinster match, where I got into the match well, it took me a while, analyzes the hooker. And then, I have this touch 5 meters from the line that I must not miss, that I must ensure in the hands of Paul (Boudehent, in the second half, who brings a 90 meter counter, Editor's note). There, I only see the negative…”
Needed by everyone
Like him, Alexandre Kaddouri played the entire match. In difficulty at the start of the match in the scrum and in the ground game (3 penalties conceded in total), he hung on, to the point, therefore, of not seeing Paiva replace him. “They respond, that’s what is needed in the team,” underlines Grégory Alldritt about the left pillar and the hooker. You never know when it's going to be your time, what you're going to have to do but you have to be ready every day. ''Alex'' was not supposed to play Leinster, in the end, on Thursday, he has to play (after the injury to Louis Keziah Penverne, Editor's note) and he responds. »
“It’s going to be important, especially over the next month and a half: we don’t know what could happen, guys could come back on Wednesday (from Marcoussis, Editor’s note), or not. All the players must be ready, young and old, and all work in the same direction,” insists the captain, who will be with the Blues this week when the Maritimes remaining at Macif Parc will be focused on the difficult trip to Toulon. “We have a week to prepare, to try to put in a performance” in the Var, says Sébastien Boboul. But given the inability of his team to continue, we imagine that it will be anything but simple.
