By dint of hearing the actors of the Top 14 repeat that “everything goes very quickly in this championship”, we almost forget that the formula full of waffle contains a kernel of truth for a good number of teams. Take the one that interests us, the Stade Français. Solid runners-up at the start of January thanks to four wins in a row, the Parisians have been brought back to third place and at the heart of the fight for the final phase by losing four times in the last six meetings, including a defeat at home ( 13-17) in a one-hour power play derby.
To this balance sheet, we must also add the absences due to injury of two holders, the scrum half and host of the game Morgan Parra, and the solid left pillar Clément Castets. In short, things are not going very well for Paris before returning to the championship with a trip to Brive, the red lantern, on Saturday (5 p.m.). “We are forced to note that we are coming out of a less prosperous period”, can only recognize the forwards coach, Laurent Sempéré.
But no question of rolling into a ball in his misfortune, at least in speech. And the heavy elimination (24-41) in the round of 16 of the European Challenge at home against Lyon becomes the opportunity to do “two big weeks of training. It worked hard, underlines the second line Paul Gabrillagues. We needed to get together on simple things. There’s no point in overextending yourself. These kinds of moments happen in a season. You have to work, it will pay off in the end”.
“We don’t try to think about what may have happened in the past”
“We don’t try to think about what could have happened in the past,” says Sempéré. We just want to try to be efficient, not necessarily to go and explain what is sometimes inexplicable. We are not looking for excuses, but we are just looking at how to be better physically, how to settle details, how to simply play better. »
And also how to get back in the game so as not to ruin everything at the end when the club will experience a new cycle with the arrival of the Labit-Ghezal tandem on the bench next season. “It’s frankly not important to be in the six to ten days of the end, it is especially to be on the last day,” said scrum half Arthur Coville. Another great classic of the Top 14 press conferences that the Stade Français does not want to check at its expense.