Agen put up Triumphant win to stay at #11

Brive played Stade Francais on Friday night, displaying a pretty dominating performance and winning 26-10. This means they jumped ahead of both La Rochelle and us before we played on Saturday, putting the pressure on.

We were able to meet the pressure head on, to Brive's dissatisfaction. We played the late night match on Saturday, 8:45 pm local time. With all of France watching the last game of the night, it was a wet, but almost humid night in Agen. It had rained all day to soggy up the field, but halted before kickoff to keep the condition more decent.

Toulon had a star-studded team, even with some of their players out of the line-up because of the 6 Nations tournament. Their biggest star is Johnny Wilkinson. Even before I started playing rugby, I remember roommates of mine talking about "Johnny Wilkinson, he's the greatest." Of course that is arguable, but he has been one of the top #10's over the past decade or so. He's known for putting in solid tackles, attacking the line, and an incredibly accurate foot (however it was off on this weekend). And ironically our flyhalf was at Toulon, but came to Agen mid-season last year because of Johnny's signing and lack of playing time.

The game started quickly in Toulon's hands as they attacked early, earning a penalty just inside our half with only 3 minutes gone. Fortune would be on our side as the famous kicker was half a meter too short for the 50 meter kick. Traded penalties came over the next 10 minutes, until a try by our captain off a turnover and offload. It was a lot of back and forth after that, with our fullback and flyhalf winning every kicking exchange.
Another try and traded penalties left us at halftime up 20-6, and rather dominating field position. The second half was going to be tough, we knew they would come out running and try to play their wide open style of rugby. They would gain territory, 20, 30, sometimes 50 meters, but eventually would be stopped by our relentless defense. It was pretty tight near the end, as they scored a converted try with 15 minutes to go. But when we put back another penalty, it pretty much sealed it. The final was 23-13 and we retained our #11 position in the always difficult Top 14.

This week is off completely from training, and then the following weekend we take on Montpellier away.

Perpignan earn bonus with no time, win 31-18.

After finishing the European Cup Challenge matches, and having lost three in a row, our team was doing a lot of soul searching. Even after the win versus Bourgoin, something had to change when you give up as many points as we did in January. That's exactly what happened, from top to bottom. The coaches changed practices, pre-game warm-up, and in certain areas, systems, while the players came better prepared, mentally and physically.

We went in to Perpignan knowing we had to come away with points. We obviously wanted the win, but even just getting the 1 point bonus loss (when you lose by 7 or less) on the weekend is going to be very important for us. We played a great game, but for about 15 minutes we went away from our game plan and conceded two tries. The first half had a lot of big hits, but not a lot of running rugby (mostly kick and chase). Big Henry Tuilagi (Samoan) was putting in some pounding runs, but our pack was meeting him in pairs to stop him.

It was 12-10 at half, even though they had dominated possession. However, after halftime was when we started to get away from the game plan and that's when they put in two tries. A yellow card to our tight head prop didn't help the issues either. At the 56 minute mark we were down 26-10, and working back into our original strategies. It was looking good when we scored a penalty, and then a try, to make it 26-18, but it was all for not as we let in one more try with no time left to end the game 31-18.

All By Myself

Lauren returned home this past weekend and although she does an amazing job while in France in regards to her work duties, she needs to head home for client meetings as well.