FRENCH COLUMN
Toulon bring in Kieran Brookes to help power them into play-offs
Four weeks out from the start of the Top 14 campaign, and pre-season is just about in full swing. Champions Toulouse will be the last to return to full training – most players are due back at Stade Ernest Wallon this week after a deserved six-week break following their double-winning exploits. Theirs will be a breakneck preparation – there’s time in the programme for just one warm-up match before the trip to La Rochelle on opening weekend.
It’s a difficult job, but if any club can do it, it’s Toulouse – and Ugo Mola at least will have key internationals, including Antoine Dupont, Julien Marchand, Romain Ntamack and Thomas Ramos, rested and available immediately.
But while the future looks hectic but rosy at born-again Toulouse, the same can hardly be said of Toulon, where head coach Patrice Collazo desperately eyes improvement after three seasons in charge without reaching the end-of-season play-offs.
Collazo arrived after a frankly crazy period following the belated departure of Bernard Laporte in which the club burned through four head and interim head coaches in two seasons – Diego Dominguez, Mike Ford, Richard Cockerill and Fabien Galthie all came and went in quick succession, three of them in a single campaign in 2016/17.
He’s at least got rid of the revolving door to the manager’s office, but his tenure has hardly been relaxed. And the pressure is mounting.
At Toulouse, Mola is in a strong position with three titles in the last two completed seasons – but it’s not long ago that his future at the club was on the line. A change of president and a clear plan focused on rebuilding using remarkable academy foundations has taken both him and the club from then to now.
Likewise, Collazo has also been charged with rebuilding Toulon from the academy up – but the foundations at Berg are much shallower than those at Ernest Wallon. It will take time for them to develop depth.
There are promising signs – Louis Carbonel, Anthony Belleau, Gervais Cordin and Erwan Dridi are all academy undergrads. But they are just the first through the door. It’s the next phase and the one after that will show how bright a ‘Made in Toulon’ future could be.
The signs right now are that more work is needed. Some 26 players on academy contracts look like they’ll be regularly training with the senior men’s squad. A few, no doubt, will make appearances in the Top 14.
The fact is, however, clubs talk long-term strategies but their models rely on here-and-now returns coming thick and fast.
Toulon owner Bernard Lemaitre spelled out the ambition at the end of last season. He wants 2021/22 to be ‘a quality season, with qualification for the play-offs with a top-four finish to have, if not a direct path to the semifinals, at least a home play-off ’.
In a sense, that’s hard on the manager. Toulon were in the top six for 20 out of the 26 weeks of the regular Top 14 campaign, and were – for a while – in the top three.
But the extended Six Nations, three matches in seven days in May, a wrecking ball of injuries and three losses in their last four games – including a final day 46-24 hammering at Castres – were the death to their ambitions by a thousand cuts.
Collazo then, in need of an increasingly urgent return on Lemaitre’s investment in the new training centre, has again dipped much deeper into the transfer market than either Toulouse or Racing 92, clubs that Toulon would love to emulate.
He’s brought in England prop Kieran Brookes from Wasps, Fiji captain Leone Nakarawa, Quinn Roux from Connacht, Cornell Du Preez from Worcester and Lopeti Timani from La Rochelle to bolster his pack – while adding Julien Blanc, Atila Septar, Thomas Salles, Aymeric Luc and Jiuta Wainiqolo to his back stocks. Nine more players have been recruited on academy deals.
His transfer dealings are smart. They reduce Toulon’s reliance on their French internationals – “We will rely on a base of players 100 percent dedicated to the club, and we will consider our internationals as added value when they are here – I no longer want to depend on thse players,” Collazo is on record as saying.
That’s understandable. Toulon want to be able to rely on their academy as much as Toulouse and Racing 92 do during international periods and beyond. But those young players on the Var aren’t quite ready yet, so Collazo is forced to look for readySaint-Andre made player solutions.
The pressure is mounting. His boss wants improvement. The fans want improvement. And the Top 14 managerial merry-go-round hardly ever stops spinning.
Last season, it moved very quickly. Agen’s Christophe Laussucq was the first to leave, in November – replaced by Regis Sonnes, who could ultimately do nothing to lighten the horror of a winless season.
Nicholas Gordignon and Frédéric Manca left Pau in December. The former is now in charge at Richard Hill’s old ProD2 stomping ground Rouen. Former France U20s coach Sebastien Piqueronies is now in charge at the Bearn club.
Mauricio Reggiardo was relegated upstairs at Castres Olympique before Christmas before leaving the club he had joined in 2019 to head up the coaching staff at Aix-enProvence, in the ProD2.
Xavier Garbajosa’s up-and-mostly-down spell at Montpellier ended in January. He finished the campaign quietly coaching the academy side, while director of rugby Philippe donned the tracksuit one more time to guide the club to something approaching respectability in the French championship and, via the convoluted Challenge Cup route, back to the Champions Cup top table.
And Clermont and Franck Azema announced they were parting ways after ten years in February. It was soon widely believed that Azema would head to Montpellier to allow Saint-Andre to return to his suited-and-booted director of rugby role. But that move fell apart as Clermont and their coach failed to agree terms.
He was replaced at Marcel Michelin by Jono Gibbes, who left La Rochelle at the end of last season, allowing Ronan O’Gara to step up into the managerial hotseat at Stade Marcel Deflandre.
Collazo needs to get off to a promising start to the new Top 14 campaign with his revamped squad, otherwise whispers over his future will only get louder. But if he achieves his boss’s lofty ambition, he can probably get comfortable in the Toulon hotseat.
“His young players aren’t quite ready so Collazo is forced to look for readymade solutions”