At the end of Montpellier’s victory this Saturday on the Oyonnax pitch (35-39), Patrice Collazo, the Montpellier coach, recognized that “it’s a performance, because coming to win here is complicated . We played forward, we put them under pressure, particularly through upwind play. We will have a position in the standings that we have never had since the start of the season, but the championship does not end tonight. We invite the players to aim for something other than 14th or 13th place.”
For his part, Joe El Abd, the Oyonnax coach, confided: “We lose but there are reasons to believe it. We saw a team which showed that it was going to fight until the end and which never gave up. The state of mind was there. Despite decisions that could have gone in another direction, we were able to stay in the match.”