Top 14 season 2016/17

Underway this weekend. Wins for Toulouse, Stade Francais, Castres, Bordeaux, Bayonne

Budgets for the coming season:

Tolouse €31.5m
Clermont €30.5m
Stade Francais €27.6m
Toulon €25.5m
Racing Metro €25.4m
Lyon €24.6m
Bordeaux €24.2m
Montpellier €24.2m
Grenoble €21.7m
Castres €20.6m
Section Paloise €19.6m
La Rochelle €18.2m
Bayonne €16.8m
Brive €16.4m

La Rochelle - Clermont looked a cracker with Brock James doing enough deny his former team the win with some great penalties. Some wonderful tries from both teams. Looks like the new boys (Lyon and Bayonne) will be strong at home making the scrap to avoid relegation even harder than usual.
At the other end of the table Toulon looked rusty and are missing a large number of international players, it could be a shaky season for last year's losing finalists. Racing also struggled a bit away at Bordeaux but their squad will get stronger as the season progresses with Nakawara to join up once he has finished partying in Fiji, and Johan Goosen to return after the rugby championship.
Nice to see Stade bouncing back with a good win against Bernard Jackman's Grenoble, after a terrible season last year.

How the smegging sh!tballs do Racing have a budget which is E6m less than Toulouse?

George Carlin wrote:How the smegging sh!tballs do Racing have a budget which is E6m less than Toulouse?

Less hotels, shops, restaurants connected to the stadium would be my guess.

That will change next season once their purpose built stadium in the la Defence area of Paris opens.
according to Wikipedia;
Arena 92 (stylized as Arena92) is an upcoming multi-use domed stadium (the first in Europe since Telenor Arena) now under construction, that the French rugby union club Racing 92 is building in the western suburbs of Paris.
It will replace their current stadium Stade Olympique Yves-du-Manoir. Originally planned to open in 2014 but delayed due to local protests, it is now projected to open early in the 2017–18 French rugby season The venue, originally planned to have a retractable roof but instead being built with a fixed roof, offers three separate configurations. In its rugby configuration, it will have a capacity of 32,000. For concerts, it will be able to seat 40,000.Finally, a movable stand will allow it to be used for indoor sports, with a capacity as low as 5,000.

Round 1 results:

Paris 54-20 Grenoble
Lyon 15-15 Brive
Toulouse 20-12 Montpellier
Bordeaux-Bègles 15-9 Racing 92
Castres 28-11 Pau
La Rochelle 30-30 Clermont
Bayonne 28-23 Toulon


So five home wins and two draws.

Massive win for newly promoted Bayonne over a toulon team for whom 1/2p scored 18pts (1T, 2C, 3P)

Sensisball, that sounds absolutely fantastic. As much as I do not like the owners at Racing (or Toulon), that will be excellent as a sports facility for Paris. Have they listed what sports they expect to host anywhere on news sites? Couldn't spot on the official website.

Looks like most games were tight bar the Castre and Stade games. It is only a matter of time til a big team drops as the poorer teams budgets exceed most other leagues top clubs at the moment.

sensisball wrote:That will change next season once their purpose built stadium in the la Defence area of Paris opens.
according to Wikipedia;
Arena 92 (stylized as Arena92) is an upcoming multi-use domed stadium (the first in Europe since Telenor Arena) now under construction, that the French rugby union club Racing 92 is building in the western suburbs of Paris.
It will replace their current stadium Stade Olympique Yves-du-Manoir. Originally planned to open in 2014 but delayed due to local protests, it is now projected to open early in the 2017–18 French rugby season The venue, originally planned to have a retractable roof but instead being built with a fixed roof, offers three separate configurations. In its rugby configuration, it will have a capacity of 32,000. For concerts, it will be able to seat 40,000.Finally, a movable stand will allow it to be used for indoor sports, with a capacity as low as 5,000.

Finally, something to make La Defence less catastrophically depressing than it currently is.

I had to help submit a bid on an energy project working out of the offices of a major French company there and after a week I wanted to open a vein with my stapler.
It's like working in multi-story carpark - grey concrete and a lot of office workers dressed in black. An LS Lowry painting, but without the happy children.

When the French want to do design well, they're brilliant at it. Intend to visit that when it opens, sounds fantastic.

Ian Madigan must be chuffed to start with his new club on a winning note, particularly opposite Dan Carter, and the newly arrived Irish scrum-half, James Hart.

I see also that Bernard Jackman is now Director of Rugby at Grenoble - his coaching career is going very well.

Pot Hale wrote:When the French want to do design well, they're brilliant at it.  Intend to visit that when it opens, sounds fantastic.  

Looks like it too: http://www.arena92.com/the-project/photo-gallery

George Carlin wrote:Finally, something to make La Defence less catastrophically depressing than it currently is.

I had to help submit a bid on an energy project working out of the offices of a major French company there and after a week I wanted to open a vein with my stapler.
It's like working in multi-story carpark - grey concrete and a lot of office workers dressed in black. An LS Lowry painting, but without the happy children.  

I hear you GC, I had to live there for 2 months during initial training when I joined my current company. A soulless husk of a place if there ever was one!

George Carlin wrote:

Pot Hale wrote:When the French want to do design well, they're brilliant at it.  Intend to visit that when it opens, sounds fantastic.  

Looks like it too: http://www.arena92.com/the-project/photo-gallery

Very interesting. The two big screens taking up one end of the pitch looks very good but might it be a bit distracting for teams?

Hazel

The promo  on the link above showed basketball, athletics, bmx and gymnastics as some of the sports they wish to attract to the venue, as well as  fitting in Racing's home games.

I think the fact that Jacky Lorenzetti is a property magnate means that he has the engineers, architects and lawyers on his payroll well used to dealing with the byzantine Parisian  planning regulations and so has been able to drive this building to completion.

Even so the build has been delayed for a couple of years.

Brive win away to a strong (on paper) Toulon team

With all the departures/ injuries plus doubt over the coaching staff I think Toulon are going to struggle for the next month or so.  Trin Duhc, if he stays injury free,will be a great signing allowing them to play a wider game more effectively than last season.

Stade vs. Clermont was a belter of a game, 30 all draw, plus 3 disallowed tries. The refereeing was absolutely appalling and even for a T14 match the ref favoured the home team, Stade, to an outrageous degree.Allowing a Stade try with a pass which was about 5 yards forward whilst disallowing a Clermont try that went about a yard forward!

Still Clermont have done well: their first three games were on the road and ASM have one win and two draws to  show for their efforts.They also blooded a young French loose head yesterday, Etienne Falgoux, who held his own against Slimani for about 55 minutes and nearly scored on his debut. Artur Itturia played in the second row for parts of the first two games and scored a great try against la Rochelle straight from a line-out  catch.
Their first home game is next week against Racing. Will Remi Lamerat make his debut in the midfield alongside Fofana?
Hopefully it will be a cracker.

Watched the stade v clermont match. It was a cracker. If only the rest of the top 14 was like that.

Are the highlights to Top14 games shared freely or is it all behind a paywall these days?

If you can access TV5 MONDE then a round up program with the snappy title of Jour De Rugby shows highlights on a Sunday morning at 10.30.
Obviously you will miss any games played on Sundays. However the french league , the LNR now have a good web site that shows highlights of all the games.
Only 3 or 4 minutes per game but has all the good bits and displays in good quality.

If you remove Halfpenny and Guirado from that Toulon team that lost against Brive you get a team who would be fighting for relegation. Their pack is a bit dodgy with plenty of players past their best. their backline lacks X factor (and really need their aussies andfijians asap).
Will be interesting to see where they stand in a month as they have to face racing Toulouse and Montpellier before that!

Whocares, agreed re some of the Toulon forwards: Gorgodze looks past his best as does Smith. I think Olivon is great no.8 but he needs the rest of the pack to become more mobile to keep up with his play! Lack of mobility was never an issue with Toulon because they had such experienced players in the front 5: Hayman, Williams and Botha knew how to win games at their own pace but the current squad don't have that experience. They need develop a more dynamic game up front if they are to compete with Clermont, Racing, La Rochelle and Stade.

I think Trin Duhc could become the kind of talisman he used to be with Montpellier if ,and its a bit if, he can stay healthy.

Mourad Boudjellal is not a happy camper at the moment, although he seems happy with Halfpenny:-

Toulon president Mourad Boudjellal rages at his team... but thanks Leigh Halfpenny.

The former European champions have lost two out of their three Top 14 matches, but the deadly Halfpenny has slotted 18 out of 18 attempts at goal.

Controversial Toulon president Mourad Boudjellal has exploded with rage at his team – but thanked Leigh Halfpenny.

Boudjellal let rip after his team of superstars lost 25-21 at home to Brive in the French Top 14 on Saturday.

It was Toulon’s second defeat out of three league matches, although Halfpenny kept them in it by kicking all seven of his shots at goal.

The Welshman now has a perfect 18 out of 18 record for the campaign.

Boudjellal claims his expensively assembled squad are now playing to avoid relegation.

He fumed: “We’re nearing the limits of my patience, now things are going to get serious.

“That doesn’t necessarily mean I’m going to fire the coaches. I may fire myself.

“To see eight years of effort and hard work go up in smoke, it’s shameful.

“Based on what I saw today, we’re playing to stay up. A team of 800 caps and we’re playing to stay up.

“But that’s the reality...we are rubbish.”

But the Toulon owner had words of praise for Halfpenny, saying: “Fortunately, and I thank him, we had Halfpenny. But rarely have I seen my team play so badly.”

The man is raving.

Losing Laporte, a coach known for his no nonsense approach and also for his half time rants , certainly doesnt help.
Some of Mourad recent recruitment did not really worked so he could take some of the blame: Maafu, Matt Stevens, POC, quade Cooper were failures. Manoa and Pelissie didnt exactly delivered, Nonu was never going to be a great club player and am not sure why he got Vincent Clerc this summer. Compared to that lot, the recruitment of Slade and Conrad Smith is the reason why Pau stayed in the top14.

LordDowlais wrote:Mourad Boudjellal is not a happy camper at the moment, although he seems happy with Halfpenny:-

Toulon president Mourad Boudjellal rages at his team... but thanks Leigh Halfpenny.

The former European champions have lost two out of their three Top 14 matches, but the deadly Halfpenny has slotted 18 out of 18 attempts at goal.

Controversial Toulon president Mourad Boudjellal has exploded with rage at his team – but thanked Leigh Halfpenny.

Boudjellal let rip after his team of superstars lost 25-21 at home to Brive in the French Top 14 on Saturday.

It was Toulon’s second defeat out of three league matches, although Halfpenny kept them in it by kicking all seven of his shots at goal.

The Welshman now has a perfect 18 out of 18 record for the campaign.

Boudjellal claims his expensively assembled squad are now playing to avoid relegation.

He fumed: “We’re nearing the limits of my patience, now things are going to get serious.

“That doesn’t necessarily mean I’m going to fire the coaches. I may fire myself.

“To see eight years of effort and hard work go up in smoke, it’s shameful.

“Based on what I saw today, we’re playing to stay up. A team of 800 caps and we’re playing to stay up.

“But that’s the reality...we are rubbish.”

But the Toulon owner had words of praise for Halfpenny, saying: “Fortunately, and I thank him, we had Halfpenny. But rarely have I seen my team play so badly.”

The man is raving.

Just to avoid any confusion:

           

     Mourad Boudjellal         A spoiled, hysterical old woman

He sounds like half the posters on here

He's a passionate fan of his team who is fortunate in life to have accumulated such wealth and decided to plough a not-so-insignificant portion of it into the club that he clearly loves. I'm sure we'd all secretly wish he grew up supporting our own particular club.

However it is nice to see a billionaire through his toys out of his pram when things don't go his way. I'm childishly petty in that way I suppose.