FRENCH COLUMN
Joe Worsley tasked with sorting out defensive woe at Castres
Another week, another major staff development in French rugby’s top flight. This time it’s 2018 champions Castres Olympique, currently 11th in the table, who have been looking to shore up their coaching set-up.
The situation at Castres, who hosted Worcester yesterday, is far from the car crash at Stade Francais. Although just three places above the Paris side in the basement, they are far from off the pace. Only three points separate them from thirdplaced Pau.
In a move that has been rumoured for a few weeks, the club this week confirmed 78-cap England flanker Joe Worsley has signed up as defence coach until the end of the season.
The 2003 World Cup winner was at Bordeaux for seven seasons, first as defence coach under now-France manager Raphael Ibanez, before temporarily taking over as head coach when Rory Teague left the club in November 2018.
He left Bordeaux at the end of last season, to make way for strongman coach Christophe Urios, and worked as a consultant with Georgia at the World Cup in Japan, before agreeing to join Castres on a short-term deal.
“I have analysed several games and was able to identify some things to work on and improve,” Worsley said after an open training session earlier this week at Stade du Rey in the 44,000-population town, about an hour’s drive east along a mostly single-carriageway route from Toulouse.
“There is a lot of quality at Castres. They have changed a lot of things between seasons, we will do everything we can to bring the team back to where they belong.”
Head coach Mauricio Reggiardo said Worsley “fits perfectly” into the Castres Olympique project. “He will bring real added value to the team. He has an international background and high-level experience. I am very happy to have him with us.”
There’s no denying the club have failed to adjust to key changes at the top following the departure of Urios and his staff. Following three straight top-six finishes, last season’s seventh-place finish was a severe comedown – especially after the surprise success of 2018, in which ‘the big team from the small town’ beat Toulouse, Racing 92 and Montpellier in an against-all-odds play-off run to the Brennus.
The defensive bloodymindedness that underpinned Castres’ second title-winning season of the decade was masterminded by another English flanker in France, Joe El-Abd, who is now director of rugby at ProD2 high-fliers Oyonnax.
But the system creaked and finally broke towards the end of last season, amid rumours of behind-the-scenes discontent. The club made a mess of their run-in, losing their final two home games, to finish outside the top six – and miss out on the Champions Cup – by a single point.
Urios would later say he was so upset at the end-of-season slip-up, in which they gave-up a seven-point cushion in four nightmare weekends, that he could not bear to face his players and staff at the club’s end-of-season function a few days after the campaign ended.
The club’s usually publicly mildmannered club president Pierre-Yves Revol, however, directed a few choice words at the departing Urios, claiming he had let his own standards fall over the last few months of his tenure at the club.
Whatever happened in the past, there’s no doubt Worsley has his work cut out. New head coach Reggiardo, a former player who had been parachuted in as a consultant to save the club from relegation late in the 2014/15 season before joining Albi and then Agen, has so far not been able to dig any defensive consistency out of his side. Lapses have cost them games, and potentially vital bonus points. And confidence has fallen away as a result.
Reggiardo’s brief is to bring on a new, younger breed of player to an ageing Castres side. These things take time – and it’s now Worsley’s job to make sure he has that most precious commodity.
Worsley’s arrival at Castres has not been the only notable movement in French rugby this week. Out-offavour French international fly-half Jules Plisson is looking to kickstart a flagging career at Ronan O’Gara’s La Rochelle, after agreeing terms with Stade Francais to end his contract with immediate effect.
It is, perhaps, an indication of how far relations had broken down between Plisson and Stade, the club he’d been with since he was a boy, that his departure was announced at 11.30pm after a Challenge Cup match in which he wasn’t involved.
It’s not that long ago that Plisson was one of five players then-new owner Hans-Peter Wild was keen to tie to long-term deals. In September 2017, Plisson – along with centre Jonathan Danty, locks Paul Gabrillagues and Alexandre Flanquart, and hooker Rémi Bonfils – all signed three-year, plus options, contracts to stay at Stade Francais.
At the time, news of the deals seemed to be a statement of intent timed to bring an end to a summer of discontent at the club following the failed merger with Racing 92, which had seen Hugo Bonneval and Raphael Lakafia leave for Toulon, Rabah Slimani join Clermont, Pascal
Pape and Julien Dupuy retire, Jeremy Sinzelle head to La Rochelle, and Will Genia return to Australia.
As it turned out, it was merely a temporary hiatus. Under Meyer, Plisson found he could barely get a look-in. And, on those rare occasions he did get a chance, he seemed determined to prove that he really didn’t deserve it.
Now, the player once regarded as France’s successor to Freddie Michalak has a chance to reignite his career on the Atlantic coast. At 28, he may even have one eye on a place in the 2023 World Cup.
It’s a longshot, with Bordeaux’s Mathieu Jalibert, and Toulon pair Louis Carbonel and Anthony Belleau way ahead of him in the pecking order – not to mention Toulouse’s converted inside centre Romain Ntamack and Clermont’s Camille Lopez, who put on a masterclass in the Champions Cup win over Harlequins last weekend.
But, under O’Gara and alongside veteran Australian Brock James, both of whom have been there and done that, who knows what could happen?
“Joe will bring real added value to the team... I am very happy to have him” - Mauricio Reggiardo