2023-08-18 18:36:00
Like every four years, despite the preparation for the World Cup, the French rugby championship resumes its rights, Friday August 18. And like every four years, the most prestigious clubs of the French Ovalie, this year La Rochelle and the Toulouse Stadium, are deprived of their elements, parties to defend the national colors. Without this hardly upsetting the internal balances.
For a long time, the National Rugby League (LNR) and the French Rugby Federation (FFR), which respectively defend the interests of the clubs and the French team, were at loggerheads. In recent years, the situation has improved considerably … to the benefit of the XV of France, which now has the players it wants much more often and in better conditions. As for the clubs, they have resigned themselves to living with it, a fortiori a year of the World Cup where no one would understand that we are reluctant to best serve an event close to the great national cause.
Thus, the 2023-24 season of the Top 14, which begins this weekend, is preparing to look like one of these simulacra of which hexagonal rugby has become a bit of a specialty by dint of unmanageable duplicates: three days in a row played before the start of the World Cup, then nothing for almost two months, and we start again. As usual, the best teams will have to play many matches (before and after the event, without even mentioning the period of the Six Nations Tournament, at the start of 2024) without their leaders, “jokers” (players recruited with short-term contracts duration) will close the gaps and… 182 matches later, a classification will nevertheless be established. In such a context, the most modest clubs, such as the promoted Oyonnax, or Perpignan, less concerned by the international raout, will hope to garner points which, in the end, would give them some hope of maintenance. While, come what may, the favorites of the competition will remain the almost irremovable Toulouse (which opens the curtain this Friday evening in Bayonne) and La Rochelle, with, in ambush, Bordeaux, or Racing 92. Last year, with an average of 15,000 spectators per match, the Top 14 confirmed its very good health, which, even partially deprived of its nuggets, the international sounding board should confirm.
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