Big clubs are hit by ‘doublon’ clashes
WE ALWAYS knew the World Cup would play havoc with the Top 14 season – as soon as the 2023/2024 schedule came out last July, all eyes focused on those weekends when club and country commitments clashed.
These weekends are known as doublons in French – or duplicates. There are nine of them in total across the season, more than a third of the campaign, including fallow weekends in the Six Nations, when France coach Fabien Galthie has been permitted to keep 19 players ‘safe’ from Top 14 action.
Thanks to Galthie’s selection choices, four French clubs have taken the brunt of the player pressure in these periods – Toulouse, Bordeaux, La Rochelle, and Racing 92.
This weekend, the penultimate round of the Six Nations, is the eighth of the nine Top 14 doublons weekends. It’s safe to say that, with the exception of Toulouse, this internationals-stripped period has been tough on those clubs dealing with multiple call-ups. Even Ugo Mola will welcome his returning players with open arms.
In four Top 14 matches over the Six Nations period – including the weekend prior to the Tournament – Stuart Lancaster’s Racing 92 have picked up a grand total of zero league points.
That losing run has featured three losses at home, against Toulouse, Montpellier and Stade Francais, and a 26-5 pounding at Perpignan, that has seen them slip from first in the table to sixth.
Lancaster offered up the problem as an excuse following last Saturday’s derby defeat: “The explanations are much the same as last week’s defeat to Montpellier,” he said. “We’re short of key players in important positions. It’s not often I’ve lost four scrum-halves ahead of a match like this, and we were forced to play (full-back) Max Spring in that position.
“The same goes for the second row, where we’re missing four international players. All this affects our cohesion.”
In the seven doublons rounds coming into this weekend, Racing have garnered a grand total of 10 points. Compare that to leaders and local rivals Stade Francais, who have picked up 30 points in the same seven matches, including five last weekend at La Defense Arena.
Or Castres Olympique, third in the table heading into this weekend, who won 24 of their 44 points, before their match trip to Toulouse on Saturday, in thosedoublons rounds. Five of those 24 points came last Saturday against Bordeaux, who have given up the bulk of their first-choice backline to France.
Or struggling Montpellier and Lyon, who beat top six hopefuls Racing and La Rochelle respectively to ease their relegation worries.
Bordeaux and La Rochelle – the other key suppliers to the national squad – have, meanwhile, gained just five points each since the start of the Six Nations.
Ronan O’Gara’s La Rochelle entertain Clermont this evening.
The doublons have not been kind to his side. Nor have injuries. Or form.
The World Cup period was pretty dreadful – they lost two of three before the tournament break, then conspired to lose their first match back, the day after the final. Two early defeats in their Champions Cup defence meant that key players could not be rested as much during the 15-week non-stop block of games between October 29 and February 3.
It’s easy – and lazy – to suggest that coaches knew the schedule, knew what was coming. To a certain extent, that would be correct, but at the start of the season, they had only a calculated guess of who Galthie might select for the Six Nations.
Toulouse, no doubt, benefited from having Antoine Dupont available for two additional domestic ‘in-window’ matches prior to his successful HSBC SVNS 2024 debut in Vancouver last weekend.
He’s in Los Angeles for another sevens jamboree this weekend, but then returns to the fifteens game, though he’s not expected to be available to France for the final match against England – no matter how badly journalists and fans would want him there.
They were set to benefit again this weekend, with the expected return from injury of Thibaud Flament and Emmanuel Meafou – who would have otherwise probably been away with France – for the derby against Castres at Stade Ernest Wallon.
But, their academy graduates have guided them to 18 points out of a possible 20 in their last four outings, including a thoroughly impressive 33-37 win in a 10-try thriller at Clermont last weekend.
And even with Flament and Meafou in the squad, seven firstchoice players were absent because of international call-ups yesterday.
Toulouse can offer up a lesson from history for rivals Racing, Bordeaux and La Rochelle.
Two years ago, as France were en route to their first Grand Slam since 2010, they suffered during the Six Nations weekend. Ugo Mola decided he would be unable to give his returning internationals much in the way of a post-Slam break, and pitched them straight into the closing stages of the Top 14 and Champions Cup competitions.
They did him proud – but at a cost. They reached the semi-finals of both tournaments, but were dead on their feet against Leinster at the Aviva in Dublin, a week after beating Munster on penalties following an epic quarter-final at the same venue; and again against Castres in the Top 14 semi-final Nice on a ferociously warm June evening, where the temperature was still north of 30C at 9pm.
It’s not a problem for Toulouse this season. Mola’s kids have taken them to second in the table coming into this weekend. He’ll be able to rotate his squad and give players a break.
The question is, with the twin imperatives of Champions Cup and domestic titles, how closely will Lancaster, O’Gara, and Bordeaux’s Yannick Bru – the latter duo also facing injury concerns, with Reda Wardi and Matthieu Jalibert both out for some time after picking up injuries on Six Nations duty – be able to listen to a warning from past competitions? We’ll just have to watch and wait.
“In four Top 14 matches over the Six Nations, Racing have picked up a total of zero points”