RC Toulon – Stade Toulousain: “The big character” of the Toulonnais after the expulsion of Parisse

At the Velodrome stadium,

Sergio Parisse in tears in the locker room, forced to be comforted by Mathieu Bastareaud. The captain of the Rugby Club Toulonnais had a funny evening on Saturday evening during his team’s victory against Stade Toulousain (17-6), Saturday evening at the Vélodrome stadium. Just days after burying his father, he was expelled in the 32nd minute of this shock of the 18th day of Top 14, for a dangerous tackle on Barassi.

At that time, the Toulonnais were already leading 10-3 thanks to a try from Facundo Isa (16th), converted by Baptiste Serin, who had just converted a penalty a few minutes earlier (8th). But with an incredible sequence of missed touches, synonymous with balls directly returned to the leaders of the championship, and the expulsion of their captain, we imagined the Toulonnais collapsing. Obviously, quite the opposite happened.

“No need to say a lot of words”

“I think that from the expulsion, the players said to themselves that we had to stay together, not let go. Stay disciplined, without doing anything, ”analyzed Franck Azema, Toulon coach afterwards. While Parisse dried his tears, his teammates offered a magnificent resistance, like a François Cros stopped at the last moment shortly before half-time. “There was no need to say a lot of words, everyone reacted the same way, with great solidarity throughout the match and I think it was also in reaction to that”, continued the Toulon coach.

“We showed character, we got pierced from the outside but each time someone made the effort to come back. It was far from won, ”said Baptiste Serin for his part. But the whole group wanted to offer this victory to their captain, and they were able to resist throughout the second period, leaving only a penalty to Jaminet (65th). Until consolidating this convincing victory in the last minutes, thanks to a superb breakthrough from the Var scrum-half (78th).

A founding victory?

The last action also sums up almost all by itself the incredible desire of Toulon with this veneer to push Arthur Retière out of the field, about to flatten, when the bell had already sounded (82nd). “The last action is symbolic, a lot of things are happening in this group, which reacts well and shows solidarity”, could savor Franck Azema. It only remained for Sergio Parisse to speak, to “thank everyone for all the efforts made by the team”, in the words of Baptiste Serin.

A victory in character, a term far from being “reductive”, but rather “primary”, for the coach, which allows the RCT to finally capitalize, after that against Montpellier on February 4th. After a complicated start to the season, the Toulonnais are back at the gates of the top 6, two points behind Bayonne. This victory against the first in the standings, which is also outnumbered for fifty minutes, could especially be the start of something in Toulon. “We’ll talk about it again in a few weeks, this competition is so compact… But in any case, these are good signals to see these attitudes”, concluded Franck Azema, confident that he will already be thinking about the match in Clermont when put his bag down at home.

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