Top 14: Order restored as French internationals return

Lawrence Nolan

After the ups and downs among the leading teams in the past two months, the return of the French international players made a big difference on week 21 of the Top 14.

Nowhere was the return more keenly felt than in Toulouse, who welcomed back the biggest number of players for their 27-19 win over Lyon on Sunday night. Many of them came from the bench, but it was enough.

Scrum-halves swap gifts

Rory Arnold opened the scoring after just three minutes, charging down a box kick from Lyon scrum-half Baptiste Couilloud for a gift of a try.

Lima Sopoaga, who mostly had a game to forget, pulled three points back, but Peato Mauvaka burrowed over from close range to give the home side a 10-3 lead after ten minutes.

Thomas Ramos and Sopoaga traded two penalties apiece in the rest of a half which was considerably better than that makes it sound, with Sopoaga adding another early in the second half to make it 16-12.

The game turned Lyon’s way. Couilloud got his early gift back when he charged down a box kick from opposite number Martin Page Relo and scampered home from 45 metres down the left, leaving Ramos visibly livid with his scrum-half. Sopoaga converted for a 19-16 lead, upon which Ugo Mola promptly half-emptied the Toulouse bench.

That saw Romain Ntamack, Antoine Dupont, Julien Marchand and Francois Cros enter, after which it was almost inevitable that Toulouse were going to win.

Ramos’ third penalty of the night saw the scores tied at 19 apiece, but the international class told late on and it was Ramos, fed by a superlative pass by Dupont, who scored the key try. His late penalty denied Lyon a bonus point as well as taking Toulouse back up to third.

Earlier on Saturday, Toulon all but rubber-stamped their presence in the Top 14 for another season with a comfortable 32-22 win over Clermont.

Tries from Eben Etzebeth, Jean-Baptiste Gros, Aymeric Luc and Julien Heriteau had Toulon out by 32-8 with 25 minutes to go and it was only a raft of substitutions that saw their rhythm disrupted against a listless Clermont side. Late tries for Clermont from Alivereti Raki and George Moala were purely cosmetic.

Montpellier continued at the top of the table with a 37-22 win over bottom side Biarritz, although they had to come back from a 22-14 half-time deficit to do so and Union Bordeaux-Begles put recent poor form behind them with a 31-18 win at Stade Francais.

At the bottom of the table, Pau put Perpignan bang in trouble with a 27-22 win featuring a hat-trick of tries from effervescent number eight and former World Rugby Junior Player of the Year Jordan Joseph, who could yet be a bolter for the next World Cup.

Perpignan fought back from two dismal starts to the halves and might have nicked the win at the end, but ultimately left coach Patrick Arlettaz publicly declaring that his side is most likely to be playing in the relegation play-off against the qualifying Pro D2 team. The news that Melvin Jaminet had made a formal departure request – it’s been knowledge for weeks that he is on his way to Toulouse as soon as he can be – will hardly have lifted the mood.

The defeat left the Catalans seven points adrift of Brive, who caused the upset of the day with a 28-12 bonus-point win over Castres, with the latter further shaken by the discovery that talismanic fly-half Benjamin Urdapilleta had dislocated a thumb and could be out for several weeks.

In the weekend’s other game, featuring two teams who seem badly to have lost their way, La Rochelle beat Racing 19-0. There was one try, a length-of-the-field effort in the last minute that finally gave at least something for the full house of spectators to take away as a memory. The rest of the game was, by and large, awful; a shame, as it was in direct contrast to the atmosphere.

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