Lyon 0 - 16 Racing

"Racingmen, olé olé olé"

This was a monumental victory. Lyon had deserved to beat us in Paris in October, dominating us in the tight (we won 18-15 in the end) and so it was especially pleasing today to see us rumble and rumble on through our much vaunted rolling maul. It was a poor quality match though, marred by ill-discipline. We received 2 yellow cards. Lyon are a very slick outfit with an excellent junior section.

Not much to say really for this was not an expansive game played á la main. We were always the better team though Lyon helped us with their ill-discipline and handling errors. Beginning with the positive, I helped set-up our try with a mazy run, a dummy and a pass across a couple of stranded defenders. I kicked 11 points, though missed 6 easy ones too, passed solidly and failed to judge the wind correctly all day, booming one punt dead and several others into grateful waiting arms. Defensively...well, let’s not go there. But we won, right? And there lies the difficulty, to reconcile a brilliant away win with nagging doubts at the very front of my mind about the standard of my game, the things that just didn’t function.

Thankfully the train journey back was the perfect way to forget all about these doubts for a couple of hours. Obviously rugby tradition prevents me from divulging the details but the beer was bought, the train bar totally taken over and good luck to any poor member of the public who wanted to walk through this section of the train. The atmosphere was brilliant as the Reichel had won too. The French have plenty of rowdy songs and the songbook was exhausted. This is definitely one of those times that I will look back on with immense fondness. One particular song went through each position and when yours came up you had to dance in the middle, under a shower of alcohol. La Marseillaise was sung, as was O Flower of Scotland, sort of...

The plan was to go out in Paris this evening and I was really looking forward to it. One of my big regrets up to this point is the lack of socialising that has been done as a team, and by myself. Playing games on a Sunday doesn’t help, though everyone seems to be on holiday this week so this evening seemed set. Sadly, a breakdown in communication meant that I never made it into Paris, after lots of texts and phonecalls, with no idea where anyone was or where they were heading. So an unfortunate way to end the day; waiting at the station, staring at my phone, but an excellent day nonetheless.

In fact, the day has really ended with me writing this, munching on Percy Pigs, trying desperately to remember some of the words to one of the songs from the alcohol and testosterone fuelled haze left hanging in the train bar. It’s just not going to happen, is it.