Following a 39-33 victory for Toulouse over Bordeaux-Begles in an extra-time thriller, here’s our five takeaways from the Top 14 Final on Saturday.
The top line
The wonderful Groupama in Lyon played host to a gladiatorial battle of the highest order as Toulouse did everything they could not to win their 24th Brennus, but a fantastic effort in the last part of extra time saw Thomas Ramos nail two penalties to take Ugo Mola’s men home in a thrilling last chapter.
It was the stuff of fine margins, of immense drama, but most of all, ridiculous commitment in the roasting heat of France in July, a showpiece for French rugby and one of the finest matches of the season at any level this year.
Maxime Lucu gave UBB a lifeline with a last second penalty after a maul infringement in normal play, taking the game into extra time, after Toulouse had dominated every facet of the game but had failed to reap the rewards for their efforts.
Toulouse’s tries came from Jack Willis (2) and Anthony Jelonch, with Bordeaux more efficient in their limited chances, scoring through Damian Penaud, Matthieu Jalibert and the superb Guido Petti.
It was a match befitting the best professional league in the world, 100 minutes of physicality and gladiatorial passion, but it was the mighty Toulouse that took the spoils as they, and Player of the Match Ramos, stayed cool in the heat right at the end.
Game changing
If you wanted to pinpoint one contribution in the Lyon cauldron of extra time, it was the massive frame of France’s number eight Jelonch, who trotted back on as a rolling sub and simply grabbed the game by the scruff of its neck in a game changing effort.
Jelonch’s stats in that last 10 minutes beggared belief; eight thundering carries for 43m, three bone crunching tackles and some wonderful ruck work, in combination with Manny Meafou and the exquisite Willis, a man who delivered a performance that might have Andy Farrell reaching for the WhatsApp button on his phone.
Alongside Jelonch, the shifts of the other Toulouse back-rows were out of the highest drawer; Willis created havoc, grabbing tries, turnovers, metres with ball in hand. Francois Cros, who spent 111 minutes working his heart out for the black and red, was a focal point of the Toulouse lineout, a defensive monster and almost sealed the extra time win himself with a wonderful 30m run against the tiring Bordeaux defence.
It was ultimately a team effort from Mola’s men, but the impact the man known to all as AJ had in those closing moments was substantial. In short, he was massive.
Rumble in the Jungle
To put this match into context, the pitchside temperature during that extra time period hovered around 34 degrees. It was sweltering stuff, with fatigue and ambition cruel adversaries all match. Players dropped like flies through injury or sheer exhaustion, with Louis Bielle-Biarrey hobbling off with a shoulder injury and Juan Cruz Mallia twisting his knee.
However, a crucial moment in the match saw France’s fly-half Romain Ntamack’s problematic shoulder giving up on him once again this season. Up steps Ramos, a man the equal of Ntamack as a 10, to deliver a Player of the Match performance, as his unerring accuracy off the tee combined with some wonderful territorial kicking took his team home.
The irony is, given the conditions, the Ramos skillset was exactly what was needed in the climatic conditions. The brilliant Frenchman, to his credit, stepped up to the plate and delivered yet another world class performance just when it mattered.
Set-piece advantage
In a game of such fine margins, Toulouse’s starting scrum did a lot to set up the platform for this win. They got the early favour of referee Pierre Brousset as Dorian ‘Dudu’ Aldegheri and Rodrigue Neti gave the UBB international props, Jefferson Poirot and Ben Tameifuna a torrid time up front.
It was telling that Mola sent back ‘Dudu’ for those very last scrummages as he played a quiet part in a very loud win.
The Toulouse lineout fired when it mattered. For the Willis try, we saw a lovely lineout extended to some 15 or 20m, a deadly accurate Julien Marchand throw to Cros, and one of the most percussive maul drives of the season seeing the Lions hopeful smash over.
With Thibaud Flament huge in the set-piece and even bigger in his carrying efforts, the Toulouse forwards shift probably deserved more tries from their partners in the backs. It was a hard, tiring and fetid shift, but one that did enough to take them to their Brennus Shield #24.
UBB heroes
UBB did everything they could to pull off that elusive first Top 14 title and to make their season one of a double, but despite their superiority in finishing efficiency, they simply lacked the ability to see off the incredible resilience of Toulouse for the second season in a row.
At times it seemed like Lucu v Toulouse, such was the brilliance of the UBB scrum-half. He made one magnificent try for Penaud with a laser precision grubber and his clearance work out of exit kept Bordeaux in the match when they simply should have buckled under the immense pressure of the Rouge et Noirs.
No player has given more in the claret and blue than Petti, and once more he did everything in his power, stealing lineouts, scoring tries, to impact the match. He’ll leave Bordeaux now to head for Harlequins, and there’s little doubt that the Stoop have signed an absolute baller of a player.
Matches like this need two teams to make them – a pair of sides playing at the very peak of their performance envelope, and for the second season in a row Union Bordeaux-Begles played a massive part in the spectacle we witnessed and, to coin a cliché, it’s sad that one team had to lose and that it was such a proud and heroic team.