Before facing Brive for the last of the season, Laurent Travers' men began a two-step waltz at the Armandie stadium, in front of a lucky 1,000 this Saturday afternoon with the objective of qualifying for the finals of the Top 14 A dance that Racing 92 knows by heart, the only club to have always reached the top 6 since 2009-2010, the year of its return to the top flight.
A performance that neither Clermont, nor Toulouse or Toulon were able to achieve, pledge of the incredible Parisian regularity in the heights of the championship.
So yes, his first performance on Saturday in Agen, on the lawn of a last of the class already relegated to Pro D 2 for a long time (25 defeats in as many meetings now), should only be a formality.
Still, the Racingmen did the job, leaving Lot-et-Garonne with five additional points in the bag, thanks to an offensive bonus point quickly obtained (14-54).
The penultimate round did not turn into a false note for the Ile-de-France residents, still deprived of Camille Chat and Teddy Thomas but who played their rugby.
An eye on Toulouse-Clermont tonight
Everything was already folded at the end of the first act concluded five tries for nothing (Donovan Taofifenua in the 10th, Teddy Baubigny in the 15th, doubled by Yoan Tanga Mangene in the 19th and 29th, Simon Zebo in the 39th) and a superiority of all the moments.
The sporting confrontation had a bit more interest in the second half, where the Agenais, however reduced to fourteen, took advantage of the
opposing
turn-over
to flatten twice (Andrés Zafra in the 60th, Jean-Marcellin Buttin in the 63rd) despite the hat-trick of the tricolor center Gaël Fickou (in the 42nd, 68th and 79th).
🎯 # SUAR92 #RacingFamily pic.twitter.com/WDSB7C4x9y
- Racing 92 (@ racing92) May 29, 2021
Attending with relish the defeat of the UBB in Toulon (25-19) to climb on the podium, Racing will watch with an interested eye the confrontation between Toulouse (2nd with the same number of points) and Clermont (5th), a little later in the evening this Saturday.
Two direct opponents for the qualifying places, while the Sky and White are looking to punctuate their season as high as possible.
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Why not in the first two, to fly directly to the semi-finals? In view of their dynamics at the end of the championship - three successes in a row, including an important victory against the Clermontois in early May -, and the caliber of their last opponent (Brive, 11th), there is hope. Fourth in the last season (that of 2018-2019, since 2019-2020 jostled by the pandemic had counted for butter), the Racingmen aspire to even better, to half of this two-stroke waltz. And the highlight of the show, next Saturday at Paris La Défense Arena.