Irreducible Toulonnais! Reduced to 14 for a whole half following the expulsion of Brian Alainu’uese (39th), the Varois won (20-19) this Saturday evening on the lawn of the Orange Vélodrome in Marseille facing the Stade Toulouse and heroically resisted the return of Hauts-Garonnais in the final minutes of the match.
Lucas Tauzin opened the hostilities (8th) on the Toulouse side before seeing Leicester Fainga’anuku respond for the RCT immediately (14th). The New Zealander even scored twice (57th) while his team was outnumbered since the expulsion of Brian Alainu’uese just before half-time (39th). Joel Merkler thought he had put the Hauts-Garonnais back on track in the final minutes (74th) before Thomas Ramos missed the conversion of victory for Toulouse. On the Var side, Melvyn Jaminet, inevitably expected at the turn against his former club, responded (well) with his kicking game by scoring half of his team’s points.
The Varois, ahead by a single point at that moment, resisted in the final seconds and were even a few centimeters away from scoring a third try. An impressive victory of resilience and combativeness from Toulonnais which contrasts with the difficulties of a Toulouse team in the evening, certainly reworked, but which had more difficulty developing its game against a team of 14 against 15. Thanks to this success , Pierre Mignoni’s men consolidate their fourth place in the standings and are getting closer to the final stages of the Top 14. For their part, the Toulouse residents remain second but see Stade Français take the lead and have no longer beaten Toulon at the exterior since… 2016. An eternity.