Toulouse player ratings v Bordeaux: Enforcer ‘bottled up and too easily contained’ but he wasn’t alone in being ‘well below par’
Emmanuel Meafou in Champions Cup action last month with Toulouse
Toulouse’s Champions Cup title defence entertainingly ended at the semi-final stage as Bordeaux, the French rival they annihilated in last year’s Top 14 final, produced a steeled hometown performance to fully merit their progress to the European decider against Northampton on May 24. Here is how we rated Ugo Mola’s dethroned side in their 18-35 defeat.
Toulouse player ratings v Bordeaux
15 Juan Cruz Mallia: Not to blame for his team’s loss as he was a safe enough pair of hands in stepping up to replace the injured Thomas Ramos. Was three from four off the kicking tee for a 10-point contribution, but couldn’t wield influence from deep in general play. 5
14 Ange Capuozzo: Can’t fault his enthusiasm as he was regularly jigging and jiving and looking for space that proved too elusive to find. Deserves kudos for the dextrous way he retained possession in the lead-up to the opening Toulouse try when manhandled like a rag doll on the floor, but he was defensively loose as seen in the way he rashly bit in when unsuccessfully defending the 23rd-minute Louis Bielle-Biarrey try. 5
13 Pierre-Louis Barassi: Had some nice moments, including a show of fancy footwork to leave Matthieu Jalibert as he danced his way to a 53rd-minute try. Was initially the first Toulouse player to test the Bordeaux defence in the opening minutes, blasting through an early gap and offloading, but what followed next typified his team’s overall effort as the ball was lost elsewhere and the resulting counter ended in a try. 5
12 Pita Ahki: An afternoon to forget for the midfielder who didn’t stamp authority on the exchanges. His lax defending for the opening Bordeaux try was especially questionable. 4
11 Dimitri Delibes: The history books will show that he scored the first of his team’s two semi-final tries, but that 15th-minute finish was a fleeting highlight in a mostly anonymous performance. 4
10 Romain Ntamack: His injured-weakened team needed him to step up on some timid recent displays but he was far too easily eclipsed by the excellent Jalibert. There were odd positive moments, such as the smart shuffle-on in the creation of the first Toulouse try and some of his touch-finder kicking, but he was well below par for a fixture of this magnitude. 4
9 Paul Graou: The adage that the bigger the game is, the more you are likely to miss your world-class players haunted Toulouse in this position. Graou wasn’t even a poor man’s Antoine Dupont, so poorly did he compare against his impactful opposite number Maxime Lucu. The spin the scoring Bielle-Biarrey left him in just seconds into the second half should haunt him. Another error was a crooked scrum feed, and he was hooked following the deflating holding on penalty that gave Bordeaux the territory for their 64th-minute try. 2
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8 Alexandre Roumat: He simply didn’t feature where it most mattered. There was one delicious sleight of hand pass to Ntamack to create space nearing the interval, but he essentially brought a water pistol to this gunfight and got blown away, exiting on 49 minutes. 3
7 Jack Willis: It’s a good job that he has plenty of credit in the bank as regards British and Irish Lions squad selection, as he was another of the Toulouse back-row eclipsed by a more enthusiastic Bordeaux combination. His breakdown penalty concession allowed the opposition to stretch their early lead to 10 points and his opening half ended with a cheap knock-on at a scruffy lineout play. 5
6 Francois Cros: Usually a standout player regardless of the situation, but his card was well and truly marked by a Bordeaux pack who had their homework expertly done on limiting the impact of this glue Toulouse player to nothing more than couple of inconsequential lineout turnovers. 4
5 Emmanuel Meafou: Similar to how RG Snyman stank out the Aviva Stadium with a very ineffective performance in Leinster’s semi-final loss on Saturday, Toulouse’s enforcer was also bottled up and too easily contained. Looked to have set the tone with a cracking tackle on Guido Petti, but that was a mirage. He spilled the ball on the next play when hit by Sipili Falatea, resulting in a Bordeaux try on the counterattack, and he never recovered. 3
4 Thibaud Flament: The Robin to the Batman reputation accorded to Meafou, he stepped up and played way better than his more illustrious partner. While his holding on resulted in penalty points for Lucu on 28 minutes, he produced plenty of grunt and it was his cracking break that resulted in Marko Gazzotti’s yellow card on 53 minutes which presented Toulouse with a lifeline they couldn’t fully grasp. 5
3 Dorian Aldegheri: Played his part in getting Toulouse back into the contest after a slack start; it was his carry that prompted the infringement that earned his team the points for their 11-10 lead on 21 minutes while the scrum wielded an edge nearing the break, but he was only given nine second-half minutes. 5
2 Julien Marchand: Initially looked on track for an excellent day. The lineout was functioning in the way it didn’t in the quarter-final at Toulon while there was also a couple of penalty-winning poaches to stem the early Bordeaux surge. However, the skipper’s influence gradually waned and it said much that he was taken off with them 12 points down and short on ideas with 15 minutes left. 5
1 Cyril Baille: The scrum wasn’t the result-deciding factor he would have liked it to have been, as happened three weeks earlier at Stade Mayol. There was a penalty win at a 38th-minute set-piece but that was the height of a day cut short by his 49th-minute substitution. 5
Replacements: With Toulouse trailing 11-25, they went to their bench on 49 minutes with a triple change that sent props Rodrigue Neti and Joel Merkler into the action along with Anthony Jelonch. They all made an immediate impact in cutting the gap to seven points, although Neti appeared fortunate to escape punishment for one foul-looking tackle.
Santiago Chocobares arrived next on the hour mark but Neti soon erred in not going low enough to stop a try, and the introduction of Naoto Saito, Guillaume Cramont, Clement Verge and Mathis Castro-Ferreira didn’t remedy the emergency. 5
