Racing 24 - 6 Clermont

What a weekend!

There’s nothing like watching an exciting rugby match at a national stadium the day before playing yourself for a bit of inspiration. When it’s your own club playing at the Stade de France for the first time, and people you know and chat too occasionally are playing then it becomes quite special. Winning helps too. The Midi Olympique headline read: ‘L’Air de Finale’ before Toulouse came north and so it may be come June. To think that only 3 years ago this club was playing in the Pro D2 (France’s 2^nd Division).

Jonathan Wisniewski gave a masterclass in fly-half play – no scything break, no huge hit, no cut-out pass; just accurate kicking from hand, taking all the points on offer and passing to the right people at the right time. He also slotted an impressive drop-goal but more of that later.

But he did have a fairly easy ride on the back of a huge performance from the pack. And so did I, just as would be the case the following day against Clermont.

We won 24-6 which in some ways flattered us and in some ways doesn’t show how much we dominated Clermont. It was a different pack that turned up this week and I was as nervous for the first scrum as I have ever been. It set the tone and we never went backwards.

We went 8-0 up after a quick tapped penalty touched lots of hands before scoring wide out. I kicked a wide penalty to make up for the missed conversion. We went in at half time 11-3 up, very conscious that we were in a similar position when we played at Clermont and got blitzed in the first 10 minutes of the second half. We never allowed them a sniff. Another penalty took us to 14-3. Then, 5 metres out from their line, I went blind, outside their scrum-half who was covering the blind and just did enough to get beyond him to touch down in the corner. As is so often the case, and highlights the role of the mind in goal-kicking, I nailed the conversion. It would not be an understatement to say that the 'crowd' went wild.

So at 21-6 we were pretty set. Though we never wrote Clermont off scoring the points in 20 minutes, we were pretty confident. Though after a bad injury to a Clermont player we were forced into the unusual situation of having to wait 20 minutes at least to play the final 15 minutes of the game as we waited for an ambulance. It’s an incredibly tricky thing to do to run around for 20 minutes trying to stay warm when your mind is already switching into post-game mode when you have 15 minutes left.

But we saw the last 15 minutes out with no worries. And just to be sure of everything, from 35m out I took a snap drop-goal that sailed over. I’m not known for my drop-goals, especially in this the land of the ‘drop’ but I received much credit for it.

For the first time this season I came off the pitch genuinely pleased with how I played, not just superficially happy for the guys with a win, that I actually played a major role in the win. It’s a brilliant feeling and one I haven’t felt for a while.

We now sit top of the Pool and in the driving seat to finish there. We must back this up with a win in Dijon on Sunday before finishing against Stade Francais on the 10^th.