Champions Cup: “We take 30 points, there is no photo”, laments Chavancy

In Toulouse

What did you say to yourself at the break when you were only 10-0 down? Henry Chavancy: We still believed it. In the first half, we had a lot of chances to stay on track. But we weren't able to make all of our highlights come true. This point gap at halftime was hard to overcome because it was very windy. We told ourselves that we had to continue playing and that we could put this team in difficulty. That's what we did, I think. Until the 55th/60th minute, we are still in the match, we still have opportunities to score. It could have started to make them doubt, unfortunately we were not pragmatic. We didn't score at all on our highlights in the scoring zone. When you don't score against this kind of team, you get punished at the back. That's what happened. And throughout the match, there was no photo.

Had you targeted the ground game to make Toulouse doubtful? We had detected that they are very efficient in that sector. With very high level scratchers. We wanted to be strong in this area of ​​play to have continuity in our game. We knew that if we managed to get fast balls, we could put this defense in difficulty. This is what we have been able to do at times but not often enough. The ruck zones are essential against very high level teams and we were enormously penalized in this sector. This is one of the factors that made the difference.

On your attacking highlights, there were also some technical errors... We have to sort out these little details to win this kind of matches... I think so, but it's perhaps in the heat of the moment, We had more chances in the scoring zone than Toulouse but we didn't make any of them... Whereas the Toulouse team, each time they entered our camp, they scored. The result speaks for itself, the best advances to the quarter-finals. It's a disappointment but we are a team under construction. Maybe this year we didn't have the skills and opportunity to perform on both counts. We know what we have to do. We know what we have to do to compete with these kinds of teams.

To hear you say, there are still reasons for hope... We still take 30 points... It's difficult to find reasons for encouragement. I may not be objective but we knew how to put this Toulouse team in difficulty at times. And if we had achieved most of our highlights, we could have made them doubt. But we didn't know how to do it. There was no photo... But I am convinced that we have the potential to compete with the best teams. Today, we didn't do it.

There is still some damage on the Racing side...It's a time of year when there are a lot of injuries. The season is starting to get long. The week of rest that awaits us will be good. We are going to bring back some players who were injured and we are going to treat the little injuries from today. Unfortunately, some are a bit bigger. We will regenerate and get back to work.