Stade Toulousain: we can never thank the forwards enough! Despite an “ultra-messy” match against Stade Français, Toulouse showed its power

So much for the fireworks. That of the field, transformed into a path by a spectacle no less pyrotechnic, in the warlike sense of the term, and that of the end of the evening wisely left in the boxes due to fog.

The essential end point of this unforgettable year 2024 (two more titles and the permanent obsession to erase adversity with, as a high point, or rather as an ogre point, the unprecedented humiliation of the finalist, the poor UBB, at the moment of touching the… 23rd Brennus) could only achieve a victory in a full but never boiling Stadium.

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Thanks to the forwards and their know-how (very poorly) in the very effective art of carrying the ball, the “red and black” secured a victory that the Parisians, promised to be spanked, almost dared to imagine!
Labit believed in Santa Claus…

“I don't want to say that we managed to make them doubt,” explains Revelois Laurent Labit, director of rugby at the other Stade, “but at the hour mark we wondered if it wasn't going to be the Christmas and end-of-year present… We leave with nothing, but this match will count for the future.”

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Paul Graou and Romain Ntamack brilliantly represent the “lightweights” of this fight on the technical sheet of this “ordinary gala” evening. Two tries for the hinge, three for the forwards so precious in the score (like Thomas Ramos, without fault on the foot, signatory of an inestimable 50-22 just before the fourth try, the first from Mauvaka) and grouped each time at the right moment against adversaries who had decided not to die.

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“It was still an ultra-messy match,” admits Alexandre Roumat, happy with the result like his friends. “That’s just what we need to remember this evening where we made some unusual mistakes.” Ramos insists on the bonus point (“We will perhaps be very happy at the end”) but his partner from Landes did not spend his time counting the numbers on the pitch: “We were thinking more about securing the victory than to the bonus…”

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Generations pass but the strengths of the Stadium remain the same. The inspiration and spectacular efficiency of light horses, however too often surpassed in notoriety the mobile power of their “big brothers”. The all too famous “game of hands, game of…” would be nothing without the collective and eternal power of the forwards. Yesterday, today, tomorrow, rugby starts up front and that's fine.