Toulouse v Sale Sharks: Five takeaways as ‘magnificent’ Ange Capuozzo soars but at what cost
Toulouse wing Ange Capuozzo rising highest against Sale Sharks.
Following a 38-15 victory for Toulouse against Sale Sharks in their Investec Champions Cup round of 16 clash, here’s James While’s five takeaways from Sunday’s match.
The top line
Despite a wonderful challenge from Sale Sharks, Toulouse‘s Test back-rowers and the impact of their bench, combined with some individual brilliance from Ange Capuozzo and Romain Ntamack, saw them home in a tightly fought affair to take the spoils.
But it wasn’t without costs for the current European champions as Capuozzo was stretchered off just before the end of the match with the Toulouse backroom staff fearing a fracture to the lower leg, but they will await scans and X-rays to confirm their fears.
Toulouse’s five tries came from Jack Willis, Francois Cros, Julien Marchand, Capuozzo and Guillaume Cramont, with Luke James and Jonny Hill replying for Sale as the visitors gave everything in a splendid first-half performance that just ran out of steam as the players tired in the 70 degrees of Toulouse April heat.
Stade Toulousain will travel to one of their arch rivals, RC Toulon, next Sunday in the quarter-finals of the 2025 Investec Champions Cup in a match that will see two sets of the most passionate supporters in France raise their voices in the incredible Stade Mayol. What a prospect!
Teams deliver
Considering the deep disruption that both teams experienced before the match, the way that both hosts and visitors stood up to provide a classic European knockout match was to be commended. For fully 40 minutes it looked as if Alex Sanderson’s Sale might pull off the upset of the season as their magnificent front-row powered by Asher Opoku-Fordjour and Simon McIntyre gave Toulouse the fright of their life as Sale dominated the scrum battle.
With George Ford showing the kind of control with which he graced the pitches of France in the 2023 Rugby World Cup, Sale teased and tantalised the Toulouse back three with some wonderful tactical kicking and no less aerial return work from the likes of James and Tom Roebuck, who both dominated the airways in the early exchanges.
But it was the bench impact of Toulouse, together with winning some key second-half moments, that ended the challenge of Sale. Clement Verge, not a household name in the Top 14 let alone in England, was huge as he replaced Emmanuel Meafou and just continued where the Test lock left off. Joel Merkler had a try chalked off much to the fury of the locals, but his impact was undeniable – and with Anthony Jelonch doing Jelonch things, the sheer power that Toulouse unloaded from their bench was a key component of their win.
Second-half moments key
For the second day in a row we saw Top 14 sides just managing to change the course of the game after half time with key moments of individual brilliance.
Firstly French Test flank Cros showed why he’s so highly rated as his abrasion and power saw him score the turnaround try just after the break with a brilliant peel move from the front of the lineout, forcing his way through a host of Sale defenders to dot down in the corner.
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And then it was the turn of his mercurial cohort, Ntamack, a man that was possibly losing the head to head with Ford, who slotted the most superb 50:22 exactly when it was needed. From the ensuing lineout Toulouse drove hard and straight through their pack, recycled to Marchand and the man known as Juju to all slid over at grass cutting height to score the crucial try that took Toulouse more than a score clear.
And, as if the work of the big men wasn’t enough for the packed crowd to celebrate, the magnificent Capuozzo treated the Toulouse faithful to the moment of the match when he sliced through the Sale defenders as if they weren’t there. It was a wonderful 35m run with pace and footwork to burn and it made it four tries to the hosts, but at a huge cost as the Azzurri flyer was stretchered off as a result of his exploits with a suspected fracture of his lower leg.
In a match that was so closely fought, one where both sides gave their all, it was always going to come down to winning the key moments and Toulouse, via their French internationals, managed to do precisely that.
Breakdown battle
When you have a star cast of breakdown icons that features the names Willis, Cros, Tom and Ben Curry, you know you’re in for a battle royal and that’s exactly what we saw. For the first half, the quartet matched each other turnover for turnover, blow for blow, with Willis grabbing two steals and Ben and Tom one apiece. The clash was fearsome – if Toulouse couldn’t get one of their ruck specialists into clear, then they lost the ball, it was as simple as that. The clearing was brutal, especially from the Toulouse front five, but accuracy is the name of the game in the modern era and you have to say that the honours just went Sale’s way in terms of precision.
However, losing Tom Curry on the 24th minute with a wrist injury was a real blow to Sale’s hopes and for all of Sam Dugdale’s industry, he’s not quite the force over the ball that Curry the Lion is, but brother Ben stepped up his effort in the Toulouse heat to underline why he’s the incumbent England openside.
It was a clash of the best breakdown specialists in Europe, but it was Cros, that brought Toulouse back into this match early in the second half, and with his cohort, Willis also grabbing a score in the opening exchanges, you’d concede that the battle was shaded at the end by the men in red – but it was one fought to the death between four brilliant exponents of their art.
Parachute failure
Many thought nothing could match the drama of the other matches of the Round of 16, but before kick-off we saw quite remarkable scenes at Le Stadium Toulouse as the third member of a four-man parachute display fouled his canopy in the roof cantilever truss, leaving the hapless aerialist dangling some 30m above a solid concrete floor and wall.
The anxious staff did everything they could to try and rescue the parachutist, Paratrooper Captain Yannick Trouille; we saw post pads and tackle bags employed underneath him as a precaution. Climbers scaled the roof to try and assist, but to no avail.
As a last resort, the local bouncy castle was commandeered from the car park, inflated below Yannick’s boots. But even then his position was perilous and had he tried to jump there’s little chance he would have survived intact.
Enter the Toulouse Fire Brigade – or to be precise, SDIS31, who managed to drive their mobile platform onto the pitch and raise the ladders some 30m to finally release our hapless hero to strains of La Marseillaise from the crowd.
To compound the irony, ‘trouille’ in French is a direct translation of the word ‘funk’! You really couldn’t make this up!
As entrances go, it was spectacular in the extreme – but probably not quite as Stade Toulousain had perhaps intended.
