With 41 points on the clock, the Girondins are already certain of having a better first leg than last season.
Chaban-Delmas wants to shine for the last of the calendar year at home. And not only because the club has planned a visual animation with the contribution of the entire public to illuminate an entire stadium which will, as usual, be sold out. Indeed, Chaban will above all be entitled to a summit of the Top 14 to digest the Yule log and celebrate, a little early, New Year's Eve with the arrival of Toulon, who is the team at the end of this season. year 2024, since she is on a formidable series of seven successes, all competitions combined. Pierre Mignoni's team is in the best shape at the moment, just ahead of… Union Bordeaux-Bègles, which has just scored a sixth victory on the Castres pitch. It is therefore a shock which promises sparks.
A poster that the staff prepared in advance and with happiness, by carrying out rotations during the last trip to the Tarn, proving that the Gironde squad was better equipped to avoid periods of tight flow, as highlighted by the three-quarter center international Yoram Moefana: “We are more calm. We know the quality of our squad. We rotate a lot in training so we have good benchmarks and everyone manages to complement each other. The players who had not played much showed that they were there , which they wanted, to show that they are capable of replacing those who are not there. Our workforce is doing well.”
A direct competitor
The UBB has already used forty players since the start of the Top 14 and the results are also improving. Indeed, Maxime Lucu's teammates, very happy to celebrate the victory in Castres by video call from his living room, are already certain of achieving a better first leg than last season when they finished in third place with 37 points. The Bordelais are therefore already four points ahead of this passage time and they hope to take advantage of this last meeting to explode their total from last season and thus get closer to their formidable series of eight victories achieved during the same period. last year (between November 25 and January 14).
It is also a crucial meeting in the race for the first two places against a direct competitor since the UBB understood last season that going through a play-off match was far too energy-consuming to hope to touch the Grail two weeks later. It would therefore be wrong to let a competitor get back on his heels after an almost perfect first leg.
