Is it the money-time, the award for a season and 8 or 9 weeks of work?
In fact, it was the goal that we had set for us, even if we may not have said it openly but, in any case, when we resumed, we wanted to go and get this qualifying all together. When I say “we”, these are the staff, the players and the club so we were very satisfied to have done it a day from the end and there, necessarily, it will be a great match, in Domec in addition. It is next to it, there will be a big atmosphere as usual in Domec facing a very, very, very beautiful and very big team of Carca, we have supporters who come so it will be a very beautiful rugby match.
Despite the defeat in Bourg-en-Bresse, are there any lessons to learn for this quarter-final, things that came out?
Yes because there was not everything to throw away either, I remember in particular the tests that we mark on turnover and on counterattacks, we were able to hold the ball for a long time on these sequences with also standing game. So everything is not to be discarded, we necessarily have lessons to be learned that served us for the future but it was still a new step on our path which also allowed us to progress.
We are used to saying that the final stages are a new championship that begins, do you confirm?
For me, it’s new (smile) but when I was a player, it was also that. There, we start, we all have a lot of desire and a lot of excitement, it was a lot of excitement for this week and for this match so yes, a new championship and especially a very big match against a very, very big team of Carca who plays at her house in front of her audience. These are just good times to live.
You say it’s new to you but suddenly, have you felt a slightly different atmosphere in training this week?
Inevitably because we are all even more focused. I’m going to repeat myself following the press conferences that we have made but I really have the chance to be daily with guys who are super applied to training, who know why they train, who put a lot of meaning in their training and in their rugby, ditto with the staff where we are all super welded and for 7 or 8 weeks that we started the adventure. We have prepared well and this week, obviously, there is a little more attention, a little more excitement and a little more focus so it’s very pleasant.
How would you describe the Carcassonne team?
It is a very complete team both in front and behind, also a team that has a lot of experience, including final stages. We analyzed them well this week, we worked to make the biggest match possible, it will of course be a very, very big match this Saturday. They are very complete in front and behind, strong in front of as behind, they also have a very good hinge, guys in front who have the experience, I think of Captain Romain Manchia, with also a big pack of forwards. So we have a very, very, very big match to play on Saturday, we prepared accordingly, with a lot of desire and appetite and on the continuity of what we do from the start by trying to generate a lot of autonomy and empowerment, the players have been preparing the videos from the start. We can therefore say that yes, it is a new championship but we remain in our way, our vision, our objectives as well as in our way of doing things in our methodology where we are a lot in horizontality on exchanges as well as on the design of the strategy or on returns with the players. The goal was that at the end of these 7 games, for possible final stages, the group could increasingly take charge so that then, as we have already said, we accompany them to performance but they are the ones who play.
After Bourg-en-Bresse, you regret the defensive service rather than offensive where there had been very good things. Do we have time in a week to settle what we want to settle and was it the main work axis of the week?
I would say that there have been several main axes. I will not use the formula of the former coach who said that it was an “encouraging defeat” (laughs) but these last games where there is not really a stakes are always difficult, there was very little chance for us to change places, there were also small sores so a composition which had still been different and therefore, perhaps also a little less automatisms. Again, that does not explain everything but I have no doubt, and we have no doubt, players, staff, that we will be there on the defensive level on Saturday.
Popular membership and the presence of the public that will move to 3 or 4 buses in Carcassonne, are a great reward?
-It is a great reward somewhere for us but especially for the players because we started a new season 8 weeks ago. In fact, we realize that we always keep a lot of pleasure by playing and also giving it to the supporters, the reward was for us on the ground to win our place in these dams and to regain the hearts of the supporters a little, even if I do not know if we had lost it. There have been more people at the stadium, in particular thanks to the various events that the administrative office set up to bring in the world but also thanks to the will that we had to want to put games to also give back to the public and the Albigensian supporters to return to the stadium. I will reuse the two words that Antoine Soave had said last week at a press conference, we stay in our leitmotif, namely pleasure, have fun and give pleasure to our supporters and we are on a mission, it is a new mission that arrives in front of us.
These final phases also validate the project of the start of the season a little bit. Last year, we were announced a rejuvenation of the team, which was a little risky, but there, you do at least as well as the previous season and, somewhere, it also validates this risk taking from last year?
Yes but it also validates all the work of the club, staff and players where, when you give confidence, in general, players can express themselves. Above all, the players believed in the project, they appropriated it and we really built it together, if I remember the first times we worked together, we were really in continuity on the responsibility side, as we said earlier, and appropriation of the project. With the staff, we really wanted the players to be players in the project by generating a lot of confidence, you will inevitably tell me that it is not the world of bisounours and if we had lost the matches, it would have been more difficult to have confidence but it is that by playing, wanting to develop a full rugby with a lot of game and a lot of volume, it worked and so obviously nourished our confidence. It allowed us to succeed in this turn a little, this rejuvenation of the workforce also with players who, even if they are young, are nonetheless competent, creative and responsible.
It is ultimately the shortest trip you could have had in this top 6. Is it something good in the sense that there is less fatigue generated by road? During Marcq-en-Barœul, you talked about the fatigue that can cause travel hours so is that the positive that can be found in this trip to Carca?
I’m going to put a downside on Marcq-en-Barœul because we still moved by plane, which is a real luxury, so that was going, it didn’t serve us but that is something else (laughs). We had not specially made any predictions because all the teams are super costume, we see it in this hen and even at all levels, Marcq-en-Barœul finished 10th in the ranking and puts offensive bonus against Chambéry on the last day, Langon who still holds the high dragee in Narbonne on part of the match. It is true that we, in terms of trips, we will leave on Friday which allows us not to have too much road and, as you said, to manage our fatigue.
The other 5 coaches can talk about you in terms of “Casse-Touts” team. What does it inspire you?
Personally, when I played 9, I have always been a little considered “Casse-Touts” as well as for my friends so it doesn’t bother me at all, on the contrary (laughs). I almost want to say “so much the better” because it also means that they consider us and, in any case, we will do our best as usual by remaining humble because we know where we come from and with always as much appetite and pleasure as the players say and as Antoine said last week with this new mission which happens to us where we will have a lot of enthusiasm to defend our colors, Saturday at 3 p.m.
Does the infirmary empty before this capital meeting or uncertain that come back as we hoped? I think, for example, of Baptiste Couchinave, Jean-Baptiste de Clercq, Thibault Olender that we no longer see
Thibault Olender is available, Baptiste Couchinave has completely resumed with all valid players, on the other hand, for JB, it is still a little early just like for Téo Dospital.
There are sometimes big differences in weight between the teams of the teams you face and the Albigensian pack. How do you want to counter them or even dominate them?
There is this motivation and this desire and behind, there is the whole work side and hard worker of the group. There is also all the technical work, the defense and the conquest, it is a state of mind but there is also a lot of work and a lot of technique on all that is phases of conquest, mixed, mauls touches, the defense phases as both on the circulation as on the technique of pure and hard tackle alone or in two, the game on the ground. We still put a lot of emphasis on technique because we think it can also be a vector of progress, it is these multitudes of things between the desire and the technique that make us play our card thoroughly and that we will be present on Saturday at 3 p.m.
The leitmotif is to let go of horses so as not to regret anything and bring down Domec?
As we said earlier, pleasure and mission.
Interview by Loïc Colombié
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